Pierre Bismuth
The work of Pierre Bismuth (1963, Paris) consists of examining our perception of reality through our relationship with cultural productions. Bismuth attempts, with humour and a minimum of means, to destabilize our reading codes to offer the viewer a position of incredulity regarding even the most established elements in our culture. In The Jungle Book Project (2002), the adaptation of the Walt Disney film, Bismuth, by attributing one of the 19 languages of the different versions of the film to each character, updates behaviors and attitudes commonly associated with a culture, and thus offers a reflection on the perception and understanding of languages. This anti-Babel, where the protagonists seem to understand each other despite their different languages: is it the utopian ideal in Brave New World, or is it, on the contrary, the image of absolute separation from any foreigner?