Philippe Braquenier & David De Beyter, Seeing is Believing
With The Skeptics, David De Beyter focuses on the amateurs of scientific ufology. This work, carried out largely in Spain, is based on the writings, documentation and research of a community of skeptical ufologists who came together in the 1970s, over a period of almost 15 years. The artist thus reveals forgotten contemporary practices that sculpt an imaginary of geological chaos. By also focusing on successive waves of “apparitions”, he proposes a reflection on the loss of utopias and the question of progress.
De Beyter works question the mythology that scientific ufologists are trying to deconstruct, the governance of a reality by technology.
It is also from these writings and experiences that Philippe Braquenier builds Earth Not A Globe. For this project, Braquenier cuts straight to the heart of the discursive mechanisms at work within these conspiracy theories, pinpointing and dissecting a series of ‘flat earth’ supporting statements using his singular experience. To achieve this, he adopts the procedures used by Rowbotham’s disciples, to display the same empirical experience through images.
Braquenier thus creates ‘forensic’ evidence by manipulating, fragmenting, misappropriating, editing and removing the images from their context.
