Growing up as a lonely child, I remember myself trying to find every way possible to make little films on my own, and embodying the different roles that I was imagining on my own as well. And one day, while I was slowly getting into Final Cut (the editing software), I remember finding the magic trick to clone myself into one frame, which at the time felt like a Hollywood visual effect to me. It was a whole new dimension opening up. And it’s funny to see that many years after that, this simple trick still remains one of my main tools.

« Aquarium » was a funny one. I had to make big holes in the ceiling to get my body through it because I wanted my position to look nearly impossible or difficult to comprehend.

So my upper body was in that ceiling, trying to hold myself as best I could, with my camera’s remote control in my mouth to take the picture. It only worked one time out of five because I couldn't properly engage the remote control with my teeth. And when I was trying to move the remote control in my mouth to place it under a tooth, I kept dropping it, and it was driving me nuts.

Besides the physical abilities, there is something about track and field that gives you a deep understanding of your body in space and its dynamics. And I think that it helps me a lot in my explorations. To know what part of the body has to be activated to hold a certain position without looking tense on camera, and to know how to control my breathing in order to generate a sensation of complete immobility. I realize now that it plays a big part…

Yes! The first one was « Armoire ».

At La Cambre in Brussels, we were preparing an exhibition where I had an exchange with Hervé Charles (head of La Cambre photo). He pushed me to try it: the “scale 1” format. At the beginning, it was a bit intimidating for me to take up that much space in an exhibition, especially in the middle of a group show. But when I saw it on the wall and when I saw the reaction of the public, I understood the intensity and the effect that a 1:1 scale print can have for my work. This direct physical interaction with the body and the spectator.

Haha, tough one! I think that my work is all about that ambivalence: between the very clean, almost sterile feel of the places I choose and the weird, sleepy presence of the body, which disrupts the cleanliness of these spaces. But if I had to sabotage this clean aspect, maybe I would do it in the editing process, just by being less meticulous with it, or even trying to be rougher in how I add layers.

I think that as long as we're affected by the problem, we can laugh about it. And humor is, for me, a key weapon for communicating and getting messages across, however serious they may be.

There's a key element I use in my video work: the creation of a character. The temporality and movement of video allow us, in just a few seconds, to connect with a character, to feel close to them or in complete opposition to them. This is something photography, in my opinion, doesn't allow. Photography can make us understand a person's emotion, but it can't connect us to a character like video does. And this creation of a character changes everything in terms of narration and humour.

I wanted to introduce the presence of an animal in Self-storage, an animal full of life to contrast with the disinvested human bodies. And I tried to put a little rat in « Box 5301 », but I didn’t find a way to introduce it subtly. I was either way too macabre, making it look like the rat was on its way to eat the bodies, or way too burlesque. So I decided to remove it… But maybe the rat is gonna show itself at some point.

My friend Anselm's playlist.