Didier Clain Explores AI and Myth in Monsters at Fondation EDF
CE QUE L’HORIZON PROMET
Exhibition running until 28/09
6, rue Juliette Récamier – 75007 Paris
More information here.
About the Work – Monsters
Currently exhibited at Fondation EDF as part of “Ce que l’horizon promet”, Monsters is a musical animated piece that explores the emotional and mythological possibilities of generative artificial intelligence. Created in collaboration with AI systems, the film deliberately integrates algorithmic distortions and so-called “Hallunications” — not as glitches to be corrected, but as compositional materials in their own right.
Structured as a looped sequence with cinematic subtitles but no voice, Monsters operates somewhere between narrative and dreams. It presents hybrid creatures — part myth, part machine — that emerge from the blurred edge between human imagination and synthetic cognition. The result is a visual and symbolic system that questions authorship, control, and the affective life of images in the age of automation.
By allowing the machine to shape part of the process while assuming responsibility for its orchestration, the piece invites viewers to consider new forms of co-creation. What happens when we let go of linear meaning, or when we embrace the dream logic of machines? Monsters is a proposal, not a conclusion — a poetic artifact from a shared, uncertain future.
About the Exhibition — Ce que l’horizon promet
Presented at Fondation EDF from March to September 2025, Ce que l’horizon promet brings together 27 international artists around a central question: how do we imagine — or anticipate — the future? Mixing scientific foresight, poetic speculation, and critical design, the show investigates our evolving relationship to time, uncertainty, and projection.
The curatorial approach balances artistic intuition with sociological research, foregrounding themes such as technological control, divination, ecological collapse, and free will. Monsters finds its place in this landscape as a meditation on affect and authorship in a hybrid human–machine ecology. The exhibition includes works by Mircea Cantor, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Agnieszka Kurant, and others, forming a collective inquiry into the unknown.
About the Artist — Didier Clain
Didier Clain is a multidisciplinary artist based in Paris. Working across video, installation, drawing, photography, and performance, his practice explores the intersections of memory, affect, and narrative systems — often within hybrid or algorithmic frameworks. His work unfolds in both physical and digital spaces, building mythological structures through contemporary media.
He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts de Saint-Étienne and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in Philadelphia. His exhibitions include Secteur(s) Réciproque(s) at the Artothèque de La Réunion, I Never Promised You a Stone Garden with Véronique Devoldère at Fondation Fiminco (Drawing Now 2023), and group shows at Cité des Arts, CNEAI, and the Centre Pompidou.
Didier Clain’s work is defined by its fluidity between mediums and its recurring engagement with symbolic language, narratives bridges, and speculative futures.
