The Archive of the Machines of Loving Grace

Written by Sophie Marx

Visual created by Mathieu Chabaneix

How can we preserve that which is important to us - our memories, and history - in a world as fast-paced as ours? Could we build up an archive, a machine that captures our thoughts and experiences, a future nostalgia all in one?

“I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labours and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by the machines of loving grace.”

 With the words of Richard Bratigan’s poem (1967) reimagined into sound, a dancer entered a circle of moss, the movements raising them up from the dampened ground as the music intensified. Despite the performer not showing emotion, emotion quickly took over the audience.

 The performance was the soul of the creative machine “…machines of loving grace,” exhibited by Elena Powell and Mathieu Chabaneix in the Bastille Design Center in Paris during the group exhibition titled “Intersections” from February 22 until February 23.

 The artists set out to build an archive of multiple mediums to capture their vision, where the performance constituted the soul, within the main body equated to the stage, six brains in the shape of poems written by Elena, and six hearts within the paintings done by Mathieu.

 Creative Collaboration between artists of the past as well as preset is a core pillar for any work, and if a partnership is founded on the purest of friendships - two people merging their souls further than ever before - I believe that it is then that we can achieve something greater than ourselves. 

 Elena and Mathieu met in 2019 while taking part in a dance program in Israel, living in an artist kibbutz. Despite not dancing together, a friendship soon emerged rooted in their mutual desire to push their creativity beyond movement. 

 “Israel was a good choice for me. Since it’s a relatively new country, contemporary art progresses way faster. There aren’t these strings that pull you back into tradition,” explained Mathieu.

 “I had mixed emotions about it then as now,” stated Elena, “but being able to experience the culture first hand showed that a government doesn’t necessarily represent its people. There were many protests, and people were constantly fighting for what they believe in.”

 Dance was the first love for both of them, yet as they entered the professional environment, Elena and Mathieu sought to expand their creativity beyond movement as they wanted to bridge the gap between contemporary art and dance for themselves.

 “I think I was always confused why these two worlds of contemporary art and dance felt so far apart; athletes and artists often feel as if they don’t have anything in common, and dance kind of bridges that gap,” said Elena.

 She continued: “I took up ballet at a young age, but I grew up with a mother who was more into contemporary art and didn’t really know anything about contemporary dance, and from that young age onwards, I wanted to feel connected to the art that my mom loves.”

 The artists craved to explore the intersections between contemporary art and dance, between multifaceted passions through poetry, paintings, music and animation pushing their own boundaries through the support of their friendship.

 “Mathieu has always walked that line between contemporary dance and art so seamlessly. The way Mathieu choreographs and thinks about art is always global and beyond boxes,” shared Elena.

 “I need to go to a place where art is really pushing itself and since meeting her in Israel and there have always come a lot of good things out of this relationship. It was the first time that I felt like someone was really trusting my ideas for what they are - not just because I’m a good dancer,” revealed Mathieu.

The first flap of the butterfly’s wing setting the project in motion occurred over three years ago when Mathieu came upon the poem All Watched Over by the Machines of Loving Grace by Richard Brautigan and shared his connection to Brautigan’s thoughts with Elena.

 “It’s a beautiful poem that humanised the idea of AI for me. I still don’t use ChatGPT, but I am obviously very curious as to a different perspective on it. Mathieu has this very poetic perspective of this future world where we have built up these machines and then left them behind,” observed Elena.

Mathieu revealed: “I was very moved by the idea that someone can actually dream of harmony between machines and nature, and I wanted to bring up a visual world where machines don’t have any meaning anymore and they basically morph into nature - or nature morphs into them.”

 Their individual perspectives merged together, their work became a multifaceted theme of progress - for humans, nature and machines - and how it all intertwines within a wider frame as well as our individual lives.

 “I wanted to turn the pessimistic feeling of Brautigan - of him being fed up and needing to dream so hard that it was taking a lot of strength into an optimistic point of view of what would come next. That’s why we created this dystopian environemnt where nostalgia could erupt, and with it, acceptance,” disclosed Mathieu.

“It brought up the idea of when we die what do we leave behind? What do objects mean to us? Everything we own is an artefact in a way. When you pass away, it gives things value. We talked a lot about how this leads us to this idea of preservation and how we try to preserve the things we love no matter the cost, even though everything continues to change,” described Elena.

Drawing inspirations from the poem the two artists connected to the theme through different paths. Mathieu’s approach emerged by building on the images of the poem, imagining a world where humans no longer exist and all is left is a conjoining of that which came before us and our legacy.

“Let’s dream about a time where human beings no longer exist and only machines and nature coexist together. In Brautigan’s poem you have the element of machines help nature, nature helps human beings, and humans are kind of in the middle of these two very independent beings.”

“How can we build an archive that relates to the emotional traits of human beings surrounding the passage for nature and machines - machines going from tools into AI and nature going into enzyme systems, such as moss, mushrooms, and bacteria that link systems.”

Elena on the other hand, considered how progress has historically influenced the lives of women, in particular considering the unnamed woman phenomenon of the muse. She translated female experiences to a rise in technology surrounding the theme of getting left behind. 

 “For me, it’s a very emotional thing to think of the use of AI. As a woman, I am well aware that the moment we create something for public consumption, it’s pretty much immediately used for the wrong reasons in many ways. It made me think about the role women oftentimes play in society in the sense that we are the providers, and then we reach a certain age, and people kind of stop thinking about you.”

“It made me think of the experience I had when I was a little kid, and my parents took me to the Louvre. I remember being really confused that there were all these portraits of women, but it only said the name of the artist. It’s the concept of the unnamed woman. For me, a lot of the movement derived from the idea of how I would feel waking up after all this time and realising that I had been completely forgotten and left behind.”

Referencing progress within technology and nature, the theme was simultaneously a personal one, providing an outlet for the transformation both artists had made in their own lives - leaving childhood behind and at the same time attempting to preserve past elements of themselves.

“All of our work is inspired by our families and our memories with them. I was raised off of really good values, and as an adult, it can be harder to uphold those values than you think it is going to be,” shared Elena.

“Every time you try too preserve something - even childhood memories - you exert control over it and the very idea of controlling something is the complete opposite from preserving it,” added Mathieu, “so one of the key ideas we had for the archive was how do you make peace when you grow from childhood into adulthood.”

Their approach towards the choreography pushes this concept into the spheres of movement as the focus is not what the dancer is feeling, but what their body is going throug. Going beyond a storyline their focus was on the different qualities of movement illustrating a changing body instead of a body experiencing emotions.  

“For the choreography we built a music partition, but instead of going through a chronology where you go through different states you go through different qualities of movement so your body can really exist in a state,” described Mathieu.

“This quality of movement has a tension and different information. There is a panel of parameters that make it what it is and when you understand the physicality of it this tension can travel into different parts of your body but it can also grow within a space. It’s like a meditation; when you’re actually trying to stay in the moment your emotions of bodily sensations would bring you out of that state.”

What started out as an independent passion for dance evolved into an artistic partnership that enabled Elena and Mathieu to discover who they are outside of dance while at the same time preserving that part of themselves.

“Dance specifically is responsible for who I am as a person. It is my first influence always; the level of discipline and the community has formed not just who I am as an artist but also who I am as a person. All of my most important and valuable relationships came to me through dance,” remarked Elena.

Mathieu explained: “She is my compass. I relate to out friendship as two naked kids in the cosmos. She always brings up this cosmic feeling inside of me and there have always come a lot of good things out of this relationship.”