MTNM Lunch Talks Presents: Virgile Novarina

Virgile-Perf 28 par Marie-Sol Parant-rec

Join us for a new MTNM Lunch Talk on March 15, 2021 to meet with Virgile Novarina, a French artist, filmmaker, photograph and writer whose work focuses on the exploration of sleep.

After studying Mathematics and Physics, Virgile Novarina (born in France in 1976) devoted himself to the artistic exploration of his own sleep through writings and drawings, and the sleep of others through photographs and films. He has published seven books of Night’s Writings and Drawings, and has exhibited his work in France, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Poland and the United States. Since 2006, the very act of sleeping has become an integral part of his work, especially through his “En Somme” series of performances, during which he sleeps publicly in shop windows, galleries or museums.

In 2002, Virgile Novarina befriended the painter Jean-Olivier Hucleux, whom he regularly filmed from 2005 to 2009. “Jean Olivier Hucleux, from the work to the artwork” (60’, 2012, a.p.r.e.s Production) is his first documentary.

Previously, he had made “Around sleep” (12’, 2004), a short film unfolding on the course of one day and whose only characters are sleepers and yawners. In 2016, he directed “Deep into Sleep” (39’, a.p.r.e.s Production), a literary and philosophical descent into various sleep states, with Michel Butor, Clément Rosset, Pierre Pachet, and Jean-Luc Nancy.

His last film, “Inner Telescope, a Space Artwork by Eduardo Kac” (35’, Observatoire de l’Espace, 2017), takes us on a journey from Earth towards the International Space Station for the creation of the first spatial poem conceived by Kac that explores weightlessness (“micro or zero gravity”) as a writing medium.

In 2010, Virgile Novarina met the digital artist Walid Breidi. Their encounter led to the creation of three projects involving sleep, brainwaves, interaction, and digital art: “The Paradoxical Bubble”, “Sleep in the City”, and “Quantum Dream – the day I imagined the ocean”, the latter in collaboration with the LABOFACTORY collective.