The Guardians of Jade Mountain

In Nigeria, to be a twin can be a blessing or a curse. The father of O is the village chief, a witch doctor who believes in the curse of twins. One day, this witch doctor tried to kill his two sons during a ritual ceremony: O managed to escape but saw his brother being murdered. Having fled across his country, he succeeded, by chance, in leaving Nigeria and going into exile in France.

The oral history of a former South Korean soldier who once patrolled the DMZ is brought to life by computer graphics in a style that conjures first-person-shooter video games.

This adventure invites us to enter the heart of a story, which Daniel, a now retired drawing teacher, told us concerning a brief but striking encounter which occurred in Paris, in 1967. When an asset manager asked him to draw up a plan of a 16th-century building in the heart of Paris, he went into the flat of an enthusiastic collector of birds, nicknamed “The Bird Lady”. Her home was an exotic enchantment of birds either flying around freely or in refined cages. The more Daniel explored it, the less he felt that he was in Paris.

Pan Mun Jom (2013) goes further in the questioning on the fictional dimension of the DMZ (and of demarcations in general) by reducing to colour spots soldiers facing each other from both sides of the border… Who is who? Who is where? Where are we? As the shooting authorizations where cancelled following the 2013 North-Korean crisis, the video simulates the filming with a thermal imaging camera reproducing images at 37°C (98.6°F) – in other words, our body temperature. Hence, the abstraction achieved through scientific imaging (re)places on an equal stage the soldiers no matter what side they are on, and thus cancels the very notion of border.

Kijong-dong, a propaganda village from the 1950s, is situated in one of the world's most inaccessible spots: the Korean demilitarised zone. From South Korea it can only just be seen and looks like a film set. The brightly painted concrete flats are empty shells, the flagpole is one of the tallest in the world and the loudspeakers blast nationalist slogans and songs. Model Village envisages a visit to this forbidden zone.