Paola Yacoub Michel Lasserre / Newsletter, Fuseki

Since 2002, Paola Yacoub Michel Lasserre’s work in progress Newsletter examines and comments on the contents of knowledge and credibility in the news media’s flow of images and text.

In a first collected presentation of their project Newsletter, the Lebanese-French artist duo Paola Yacoub Michel Lasserre shows five computerised animations at Bildmuseet, all based on current news material. Pictures and texts from global news media are commented on, processed, contextualised, and re-evaluated by the artists. The animations are based on themes that have emerged during the work of the Newsletter project, based on observations of news reporting and the use of photographs, historical comparisons and interpretations. One example is the theme Tamils Tigers and Tsunami, which draws attention to the confusion of news reporting on natural and man-made disasters, concretely here with materials from Sri Lanka where the reporting on guerrilla warfare and the tsunami coincided with each other. The artists put it this way: “We explore the (news)picture from a sceptical point of view, from the fact that our presumptions revolving around images are no longer valid.” The presentation at Bildmuseet also includes the themes Hotel Lobbies and Screen Scenes.

Newsletter, Fuseki is an exhibition that will continuously grow throughout the exhibition period. The computer animations, presented on plasma display panels, will be unveiled at the opening of the exhibition, on September 16. However during the exhibition they will be accompanied by newly produced photographs and text commentary on the walls around them.

Paola Yacoub, was born in Beirut in 1966 and studied architecture in London; Michel Lasserre, was born in 1947 in Auch, France, and studied architecture in Paris. Paola Yacoub and Michel Lasserre have been working together ever since 1996. After many years with Beirut as their base, they are now working out of Berlin. Paola Yacoub Michel Lasserre have exhibited all over the world, with solo exhibitions in Paris, Berlin and Barcelona. They are currently featured at the 1st Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, Greece. In 2002, they participated in the project Contemporary Arab Representations: Beirut at Bildmuseet.