This intervention proposes a reading of Peter Halley’s work through the dual prism of contemporary philosophy and cinema. We will explore how Peter Halley’s ‘neo-geo’ paintings, permeated by political questions, resonate particularly with Jean Baudrillard’s thinking on the system of objects and simulacra, as well as with certain cinematographic fictions related to novel spaces of enclosure (Playtime, THX 1138). ‘We might well describe modern man, the cybernetician, as a mental hypochondriac, as someone obsessed with the perfect circulation of messages.’ (Baudrillard).

Biographical note
Olivier Schefer is a writer, philosopher, and professor of aesthetics and the philosophy of art at University Paris 1. Through his works, Olivier Schefer studies the aesthetic theory of German romanticism, the cinema of ghosts and somnambulists, as well as the contemporary poetics of ruins and entropy. He is the author of numerous contributions to catalogues on contemporary artists (Cyprien Gaillard, Anish Kapoor, Bernar Venet, Stéphane Thidet…). His most recent publication is a piece on the formal, theoretical, and literary work of Robert Smithson titled Sur Robert Smithson. Variations dialectiques (La Lettre volée, 2021).