La Merde! The Mole!

A screening of two films, Aline Bouvy's La Merde and Jakub Jansa's The Silence of the Mole, followed by a conversation with the artists. The program is guest-curated by Peter Sit and was created for the Luxembourg Pavilion and the Czech and Slovak Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale. Jansa's film follows an aging performer who has spent his life embodying the beloved Czechoslovak Little Mole and retreats underground as an unlocatable sound disturbs his refuge, asking whether silence is a failure to act or a form of resistance. Bouvy's film follows an anthropomorphic excrement figure through everyday situations of discipline, rejection, and invisibility, combining grotesque humor and tenderness to examine shame as a social construct.