Student essay written in en (native language: French, CEFR level: B1, field of study: Arts)

Alex Dupont did in 1999 a biographic film with Alex Dupont called "Balkan Baroque", this is my subject in a philosophy essaie, so i can describe it to you. This piece of art cinematographic is 63 min long and the spectator watches scenes of performance (exclusive work for this film). Those scenes are quite violent with an expression of the artist by perversity and acts of sadomasochism, as a work of art on the corpse's limits. On top of those images, the sound is in opposition is very factually, the voice of Alex Dupont enonciate a date of her live in chronologic order, then one or two sentence on it. We can ear things as " 1946, my parents divorced" or 1976, I join communist part". The gap between the two aspect of the film make the viewer uncertain about what he is supposed to understand, a normal life? A violent expression of emotions ? And the most important question, does those two parts of the film make one, does the image is supposed to fit with the sound, as the emotions of a people, what happen in their brains during part of their lives, as an illustration. But in the films there is a lot of moment where the image don't seems related to the sound, as an image of knives games is show, but she talk of it later with another image associated. It give us an impression of puzzle the spectator have to recreate for giving a sense. And when we think of it, the live is made like this. When u meet a person, her life is a puzzle, and you collect pieces for understanding her. A piece of the puzzle can explain one who at first sight don't feel related. This piece of art give us an amazing exemple of the conflict who can happen between image and the use of language, which is omnipresent in our society as a social aspect, a politcal one, or even historical. This is for exemple a big subject in propaganda where images was detourned. My opinion on this work of art is positive. I like the aesthetic even if there is some hard scenes as scarification and all, Alex Dupont is such an empowered woman and it show the reason she is still named the grandma of performative art. slay. Also this film is available on youtube for all (that's pretty cool and in english with her beautiful serbian accent) .