BIO – Sebastien Loghman

Sebastien Loghman is a visual artist, a filmmaker and a musician, who has been patiently building up a protean body of work with multiple resonances and wordplay, since graduating from Paris National School of Fine Arts in 2006 with the DNSAP (Master 2) and his PHD from Le Fresnoy in 2009. The works he has created have made full use of the technological means available today, though originating in the practice of drawing by hand.

PORTRAIT BY ART CRITIC JULIETTE SOULEZ - in Quotidien de l'Art (june 2022) // translation : Paul Willenbrock

The visual artist and filmmaker Sebastien Loghman, born in 1980, a PHD graduate from Le Fresnoy - National Studio of Contemporary Arts (Lille, France) and a master 2 graduate from National School of Fine Arts (Paris), has just finished an art residency at SOFILM to rewrite the screenplay of his science-fiction film “E-Meet”. His film tells a love triangle story with two lovers who are tearing themselves apart and a robot.

Loghman is at a significant turning point in his career, juggling with projects that require considerable production budgets with improvised contemporary art installations, often with digital techniques of his own invention. What is his subject? Human psychology and neo-liberal society with a particular emphasis on the United States. Indeed, he has also studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and has frequently stayed with the Californian branch of his father’s family, part of the Iranian diaspora.

New technologies offer opportunities to create a world of persistent images that immerse the viewer into the parallel universes of intimate or personal memory and colourful but disturbing fantasies in the Freudian sense. As he himself has said, the cycles of his work are at the same time a way of classifying his works and of adding each time a new window to the themes that he is constantly exploring.

As if with a kaleidoscope, he has created a multi-channel, labyrinthine, polymorphous body of work that has already received several awards and has been exhibited and shown worldwide, and in which he puts himself centre-stage, or creates roles for actors in fiction films.

The cycle Homemade Memories brings together several installations treating the theme of the artist’s passage from childhood to adulthood. The video Maisonvidéo (1990-2020) - fiction aux masques [Homevideo – fiction with masks] is particularly intriguing and melancholy; an HI8 camcorder is placed in the exact places where, 30 years previously, the ten-year-old artist had filmed himself playing with a friend, and this short film is now shown on the screen of the camcorder. The use of these personal archives, recalling the work of Christian Boltanski, plunges the viewer into the process of memory, of images projected and sounds heard in places conducive to reminiscence. The artist’s own mind is represented by this camera, immersed in a setting that is now empty of people.

However, in 2017, never losing sight of the evocative power of the image, Sébastien Loghman made a series of photographs, The TaVReler (le tour du monde en 7 jours) [round the world in 7 days], which became a series of posts on Instagram throughout a week during which he photographed himself wearing a virtual reality helmet. In this way the reverse process is activated, with the viewers projecting their own imaginings of real or imagined travels onto the image.

The artist is a collector of images, particularly of his past, and he uses them for other installations in which he appears as Narcissus with the video changing from a reflection in the water as a child into an adult reflection. This installation has been shown at a number of exhibitions including the “Jeune Création 2008” exhibition in Paris, the “European Video Gathering of Lassie” in Vienna and at the “Espace SD” in Beyrouth.

Although the on-going series of the cycle Iterative Memories of Cantor Dust Man, consisting of two films and two drawings, is not exactly a self-portrait, Sébastien Loghman plays his double in it. These films are “self-fictions”. In the first film, dating from 2009, Cantor Dust Man, which won the “Prix Canal Plus” at the Brest European Short Film Festival, and was produced by Le Fresnoy studio, Sébastien Loghman filmed himself in a living-room eating a Romanesco broccoli soup while miniature self-portraits appear in fractal form on his face. As a multi-disciplined one-man band, the artist also wrote the song, played it on the piano and sang it with multi-tracked choral harmonies. The lyrics of this video, realized with special effects, revolve around the memory of this fluorescent green food that set off his train of thought. Inspired by the scientific theory of the fractal, Sébastien Loghman adds a humorous touch in the décor of the room, with the snow, seen through the window at the end of the musical film, a nod to the mathematical figure of the fractal in the Koch snowflake, just like that of the Romanesco broccoli. Starting out from a self-portrait drawn in ink in 2003, the artist has created a tangy, somewhat surrealistic short-film.

He returned to the same style in 2010 with Puzzle 3D, one of the films selected for the festival of 3D films to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of Paris omnimax theatre La Géode. Romanesco, an old man played by André S. Labarthe, notices that a fossil of a shell is missing from his box of souvenirs. Romanesco lowers himself into his bathtub and as he emerges from the water his silhouette transforms into a window onto a happy memory: a distant memory of a picnic by the water with two young women. In the end one of them hands him the missing object and he takes it from her and puts it back into the real box in which he keeps his collection. A happy denouement to the story in this short-film about old age and memory, from which a disturbingly strange feeling already emerges, which is however never devoid of humour and poetry.

In the cycle “Psyché plastique”, this disturbing strangeness was already felt in Je ne connais pas d’Alice [I’ve never heard of Alice], a 15-minute science-fiction film made in 2008, which is set in a mysterious hotel called Protopia. Alice, a new chambermaid, discovers the other side of the “system” in which she is involved. A parallel reality is played out in the rooms, a politician is computer-programmed to win, a sort of modern-day golem (called Henri Golem!), strange meetings of businessmen who seem to be gambling with the future of the world and, above all, in a corridor reminiscent of that in “The Shining”, a ball of human skin, a sort of round belly which makes one wonder what it contains – “Human Paste”, as the artist calls it, with a single orifice, either an anus or a mouth. Alice pushes her finger into this sort of disturbing “Origine du monde” and, terrified, ends up escaping from the hotel and escaping the surveillance cameras of the hotel manager, a young teenager who seems to be playing a video game as if it were all-important.

In the 2019 film Uncut, we witness an argument between a man’s body, using subtitled sign language, and his head (which speaks). This amusing and touching spin-off of Je ne connais pas d’Alice looks at the psychological workings of a man’s soul-searching when he is angry with himself. This quarrel takes place in the same hotel as Alice hotel and works as an allegory of Lacanian extimacy.

Back to 2005, when Sebastien Loghman made an interactive video of a naked woman, lying with her back to the viewer, filmed from her head to her hips, called Le Sommeil [The Sleep] and Adam's CAM. It has already been shown in Brazil, Canada and Grenoble (France), as well as at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, where it was shown at the exhibition called “Intime*10” Flash Festival, just after it was made in 2005. This interactive video, shot in the half-light of the night, allows the viewer to activate this sleeping body imperceptibly. Although it can at first be experienced as sweet intimacy with a stranger, it can also give rise to a certain unease, due to the voyeuristic aspect of this installation.

The unseen, the unknown, as Jacques Lacan would say, is at the heart of Sebastien Loghman’s work. For example, in his 2006 video and installation Sans titre (ce que vous ne voyez pas existe aussi) [Untitled (what you can’t see exists as well)], produced with the support of La Caisse des Dépôts et des Consignations and the help of MAC VAL (Val de Marne Contemporary Art Museum), he showed technicians, equipped with a crane and a truck, installing an invisible or non-existent artwork in the MAC/VAL.

In Boys Noize – What You Want (2013), however, beliefs in the supernatural are the prevailing theme, giving rise to an ironic film showing a meeting of members of a cult led by a guru with superpowers; the whole thing is right out of American superhero comic-books.

His insistence and repetition of motifs of disturbing strangeness and derision draw on invisible worlds such as memory or fantasy (which he knows well, having worked for a long time on H.P. Lovecraft and virtual reality). Drawing also often remains a starting point in his work, as can be seen in Portraits 2020, the series of pencil drawings of various figures from the world of the arts that he did during the Covid lockdown periods, playing on the mask and the invisibility of the face.

GRANTS AND AWARDS

2021
★ contemporary art grant Ekphrasis - ADAGP, FR
★ short film Cantor Dust Man is part of the Online Animation Library (OAL) of Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film (ITFS), GERMANY
2019 ★ short film Cantor Dust Man is selected to be shown in all Haut-de-France region's movie theatres, FR
2018
★ fonds d’aide aux projets nouveaux médias de la Ville de Paris, FRANCE - VR Lovecraft, the Outsider
★ Screenwriter's grant Brouillon d'un rêve - SCAM, FR
★ PidsViz of Paris Images Digital Summit, FRANCE - Enghien-les-Bains - VR Lovecraft, the Outsider
2014
★ Vimeo Staff Pick, USA for the music video Boys Noize - What You Want
★Radio Télévision Suisse's video of the week, SWITZERLAND - Boys Noize - What You Want
★ Preview of music video What You Want on Rolling Stones Magazine website's first page, USA
2013
★ Vimeo Staff Pick, USA - Boys Noize - Ich RU
★ The 15 Best Animated EDM Music Videos, curated by Complex, USA - Boys Noize - Ich RU
★ Teez FM's video of the week, curated by TeezFM - Boys Noize - Ich RU
2012
★ selection of the best films produced by Le Fresnoy in 15 years - Palais de Tokyo contemporary art museum of Paris -Cantor Dust Man
★ Cantor Dust Man selected for the DVD 'Une sélection des productions du Fresnoy : le chant, la danse et l'art contemporain'
2010 ★ Coup de Coeur Canal Plus, Short Film Corner, Festival de Cannes, FRANCE - Cantor Dust Man
2009
★ short film Cantor Dust Man is part of the serious video game Images 2.0
★Canal Plus Award - 24th Brest European Short Film Festival, FRANCE - Cantor Dust Man
2006
★ Aide individuel à la création, Val-de-Marne, FR

★ Prime d'encouragement à la création, Mairie de Paris, FR
2003

★ Art-video.org, an artists collective founded by Sebastien Loghman in 2003 to promote video and digital arts, is picked as 'Site of the Day' by french cultural magazine Téléram

SOLO SHOWS

2023 • Solo exhibition at Le Castelet, Toulouse, FR

2023 • Sculpter l’identité, solo screening and masterclass at MAC VAL, du Val de Marne museum of contemporary art, FR

2022 • Décloisonner les pratiques cinématographiques, solo screening and masterclass in conversation with art critic Juliette Soulez, Sorbonne-Nouvelle's Cinematheque, Paris, FR

2020 • Solo screening and masterclass at Paris College of Art, Paris, FR

2019 • Solo screening and masterclass in conversation with art critic Violaine Boutet de Monvel, Silencio, Paris, FR

2010 • Solo screening and masterclass in conversation with film critic Isabelle Danel, Beaux-Arts de Paris, FR

2006 • Zoon Politikon, exhibition at Palais des Etudes, Beaux-Arts de Paris, FR

2005 • 8 Revolutions, Lecture Hall, loop screening at San Francisco Art Institute, USA

2003 • cycle Pensée des Passés, exhibition at Galerie Gauche, Beaux-Arts de Paris, FR

ART AND SCREENWRITING RESIDENCIES

2021 ★ SF screenwriting at SoFilm de genre, FR - script doctoring by Stephan Castang
2019
★ Writing residencie at Villa La Brugère, Arromanche, FR
★ Théâtre du Minotaure, Béziers, FR
★ Writing residencie at Trégor Cinéma, Trébeurden, FR
2018 ★ new media writing- Nouvelles Écritures of Languedoc Roussillon Cinéma, Montpellier, FR

EDUCATION

2021 • Summer of Unreal seminar and training course - certification by Epic Games for Unreal Engine in partnership with Escape Studio, UK - INTERNATIONAL
2018 • new media writing training course - Nouvelles Écritures of Languedoc Roussillon Cinéma, Montpellier, FRANCE
2017 • Virtual Reality writing and directing training course - S'immerger, écrire et tourner en réalité virtuelle, Mille Sabords training, FR
2014 • Adobe After Effects training course, CIFAP, FR
2009 • PHD from film and digital art school Le Fresnoy - National studio of contemporary arts, Lille, FR
2006 • DNSAP (MFA) from Beaux-Arts de Paris, FR
2005 • Scholarship for San Francisco Art Institute, USA

COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS

2023

• exhibition Des Histoires Vraie, MAC VAL, du Val de Marne museum of contemporary art, FR

2021
• Habiter Marseille Poétiquement - l'Atelier d'Ailleurs Ou La Fabrique de l'Imaginaire - Marseille, FR

2019
• Stereopsia Festival (competition), Bruxelles - BELGIUM
• Exhibition Surreal, Bruxelles - BELGIUM
• 32th Festival Instants Vidéo Numériques et Poétiques, Friche de la Belle de Mai, Marseille, FR
• Exhibition Les chambres sont occupées, Ryad Hotel, Marseille, FR
• NewImages Festival (digital arts, competition), Paris, FR
2018
• PidsViz - Paris Images Digital Summit (competition) - Enghien-les-Bains, FR
2017
• Exhibition Laval Virtual - Laval, FR
• Exhibition Virtuality - Le Centquatre - Paris, FR
• Exhibition 'Ballades en son et en images, 5' - Nice, FR

2014
• Videodrome festival, Paris, FR
• Exhibition Le corps numérique, Liberté Theatre, Toulon, FR
2012
• Exhibiton Nuit Blanche, Palais de Tokyo, contemporary art museum of Paris, FR
• Imagem Contato Festival - Mostra Sesc de Artes 2012, Sao Paulo, BRASIL
2011
• Videoformes video art festival, Clermont Ferrand, FR
• exhibition Regard sur le Fresnoy, Anciennes Ecurie, Roncq, FR
2010
• Di-stances, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, CHINA
• 25th anniversary of french omnimax theatre La Geode- screening in stereoscopic 3D of short film 'Puzzle', Paris, FR
• Festival Trace de Vie, Clermont-Ferrand, FR
• 'Semaine des arts de la scène et des créations expérimentales', Valence French Institute, SPAIN
• Busan International Film Festival, SOUTH KOREA
• Bains Numérique, Enghiens-Les-Bains Art Center, FR
• Musicvideoart#5, Heure Exquise - International Center for video arts of Lille, FR
• Exhibition at Loop '10 video art festival, Barcelona, SPAIN
• Exhibition Lille Art Fair, FR
• Mostra Experiencias no video contemporaneo - Cinedesign, BRASIL
• Festival Videoformes (competition), Clermont-Ferrand, FR
• Exhibition Jeune Creation 1951-2010, Anthony, FR
• Exhibition Géométries & Images numériques, at Gare Numerique, Jeumont, FR
2009
• Exhibition Temps d'Images Festival, La Ferme du Buissons, Noisiel, FR
• Lillosciences, Lille, FR
• Festival ArtCourtVideo, Arles, FR
• E-ARTS festival, Shanghai, CHINA
• Winter festival, Porto Alegre - BRASIL
• Festival internazionale del cinema d'arte - ITALY
• Exhibition Panorama 11, Le Fresnoy, Lille, FRANCE - curator Régis Durand
2008
• Exhibition Jeune Creation, Grande Halle de La Villette, cite des sciences et de l'industrie, Paris, FR
• Exhibition Panorama 9-10, Le Fresnoy, commissariat : Bernard Blistene, Tourcoing, FR
• Rencontres du Court de Montpellier, FR
2007
• Exhibition Sociéte anonyme, FRAC Le Plateau (Fond Régional d'Art Contemporain d'Île-de-France), Paris, FR
• Exhibition Jeune Creation 07, La Bellevilloise, Paris, FR
• Exhibition Videosalon curatorial rebound project, Galerija 10m2, Sarajevo, BOSNIA
2006
• Exhibition La Fabrique du Dessin, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Paris, FRANCE
• Exhibition C'est à côté, MAC VAL- Contemporary Museum of Val de Marne, FR - curators : Laurent Le Bon, Dorothée Charles et Claude Closky
2005

• Exhibition 'Intime*10',Flash Festival, CENTRE NATIONAL D'ART ET DE CULTURE GEORGE POMPIDOU, Paris, FR

• Exhibition Spring Show, Walter & Mc Bean Gallery, San Francisco, USA
• Pacific Film Archive,Berkeley Art Museum - USA
• Mini Devious, ATA, San Francisco - USA
• Exhibition Fluxus Festival 2005, netart, BRASIL
• Exhibition Le Nu, netart, Incident.net
2004
• Exhibition Beyrouth Utopie, Espace SD, Beirut, LEBANON
• Screening of Art-video.org, ALBA, LEBANON
• Exhibition Still Life, online exhibition, Incident.net
• Long Night of Vidéo, SPTV, Musée d'Art Contemporain de Bucarest - ROMANIA
• Exhibition International Video Gathering,Lassie, Vienne, AUSTRIA
• Festival Art-video.org, Divan du Monde, Paris, FR
2003
• Festival Vidéo/vie débat, Vaisseau Fantôme, Paris, FR
• Inauguration Art-video.org, Batofar, Paris, FR

CINEMA / CHOICE OF FESTIVALS & SCREENINGS

2024
• Essonne en Court festival
• La Saison Video (https://saisonvideo.net) + interview

2021
• Screen & Story film festival, ANGLETERRE
• National Short Film Festival, Washington DC, USA

2019
• Festival Kinolikbez, Saint Petersbourg, RUSSIA
• 32th Festival Instants Vidéo Numériques et Poétiques, Friche de la Belle de Mai, Marseille, FR
• Best of Flux -Lille International Short film Festival, FR
• Orscheler Filmfest - GERMANY
• Festival des Nouveaux Cinémas, Paris, FR
• NewImages Festival (competition), Paris, FR
• La Fête du Court Métrage, Trébeurden, FR
• Les toiles du KB, Kremlin-Bicêtre, FR
• La Fête du Court Métrage, Trébeurden, FR
2018
• Sunny Side of the Docs, La Rochelle, FR
• PidsViz - Paris Images Digital Summit (competition) - Enghien-les-Bains, FR
2017
• Exhibition 'Ballades en son et en images, 5' - Nice, FR

2014
• Videodrome festival, Paris, FR
• 2013
• Tampere Film Festival, FINLAND
• International Music Video Festival, Paris, FR
• Groovy Images Music Films and video festival, TURKEY
2011
• 20th Côté Court film festival Pantin, FR
• Féte de l'animation, Lille, FR
2010
• 25th Brest European Short FIlm Festival - 'Il était 1x5' rencontres cinéma et nouvelles technologies, FR
• 25th anniversary of french omnimax theatre La Geode- screening in stereoscopic 3D of short film 'Puzzle', Paris, FR
• L'étrange Festival - Canal+ selection, Paris, FR
• Stuttgart International Animation Film Festival - Trickfilm (compétition), GERMANY
• Côté Court (compétition), Pantin, FR
• Festival du film court de Namur (compétition), BELGIUM
• Festival Trace de Vie, Clermont-Ferrand, FR
• Busan International Film Festival, SOUTH KOREA
• Magma, mostra di cinema breve (competition), ITALY
• Mostra Experiencias no video contemporaneo - Cinedesign, BRASIL
• Festival Videoformes (competition), Clermont-Ferrand, FR

2009
• Festival Européen du film court de Brest
• Exground Film Festival, Wiesbaden,GERMANY
• Festival International du court-métrage, Lille, FR
• Kino Fest, Bucharest - ROMANIA
• Cyber Sousa-Xiamen International Animation Festival, Xiamen -CHINA
• Winter festival, Porto Alegre - BRASIL
• Festival internazionale del cinema d'arte - ITALY
• Rencontres du film court de Madagascar - MADAGASCAR
2008
• Rencontres du Court de Montpellier, FR
2005

• Pacific Film Archive,Berkeley Art Museum - USA
• Mini Devious, ATA, San Francisco - USA
2004
• Screening of Art-video.org, ALBA, LEBANON
• Long Night of Vidéo, SPTV, Musée d'Art Contemporain de Bucarest - ROMANIA
• Festival Art-video.org, Divan du Monde, Paris, FR
2003
• Festival Vidéo/vie débat, Vaisseau Fantôme, Paris, FR

PUBLICATIONS

2023

• personnal exhibition at Castelet de Toulouse

• exhibition Des Histoires Vraie, MAC VAL, du Val de Marne museum of contemporary art, FR

2022 • Sebastien Loghman-Adham, homme orchestre, Le Quotidien de l'Art, FR

2019 • Festival NewImages, catalogue, FR

2018 • Paris Images Digital Summit, catalogue, FR

2012
• Théorèmes, valeurs erronées et idées fausses, catalogue, ed. Centre d'art Bastille, FR
• Pratiques performatives : Body Remix, ed. Presses Universitaires de Quebec et Presses Universitaires de Rennes, FR
• Abécédaire du Web, 26 concepts pour comprendre la création sur Internet, ed. PUQ Numérique, FR
• Les secrets du dernier clip informatique Boys Noize IchRU - The Creators Project, FR
• L'homme à tête de clavier - Ecran, Liberation, FR
• Boys Noize, le clip IchRU - Premiere, FR
2011
• Côté Court, 20 ans, catalogue, FR
• Nanodramas : identity pills, l'identité et la consommation lue à travers l'oeuvre d'art Web, mémoire de Mathieu Mundviller, département d'histoire, faculté des lettres, université laval, québec, CANADA
• Videoformes 2011, catalogue, FR
• Métaphysique et cyberespace, se raconter la matière et la pensée sur le Web, Joëlle Gauthier, CANADA

2010 • Videoformes 2010, catalogue, FR

2009
• NT2 - nouvelles technologies nouvelles textualites, le laboratoire de recherches sur les oeuvres hypermédiatiques, CANADA
• Panorama 11, un archipel d'expériences, catalogue, ed. Le Fresnoy, , FR
• Protée - corps photographiques, corps politiques, revue vol.37 n°1, CANADA
2008
• Jeune création 08, catalogue, ed. Analogue, FR
• Panorama 9-10, catalogue, ed. Le Fresnoy, FR
2007
• Jeune création, Le Monde - blog Amateur d'art par lunettes Rouges, FR
• L'effet De Présence. De L'immédiateté De La Représentation Dans Le Cyberespace.Cyberthéorie. Ed. Archée, CANADA
• Communication langages, usages médiatiques du portrait, revue N°152, CANADA
• Jeune création 07, catalogue, ed. Jeune Création, FR

• Jean Bonna, collectionneur d'exception, Le Journal des Arts, FR
• C'est à côté, catalogue, ed. ENSBA - Science Po, FR
• Dessins d'hier et d'aujourd'hui, Le Monde - blog 'Amateur d'art par lunettes Rouges, FR
• La fabrique du dessin,catalogue, ed. ENSBA, FR

2005 • 'Intime*10',Flash Festival, CENTRE NATIONAL D'ART ET DE CULTURE GEORGE POMPIDOU, Paris, FR

2004 • Beyrouth Utopie à l'Espace SD - onze perceptions artistiques d'une ville, L'Orient le jour, LEBANON

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