Éric Baudelaire

In Other Words

My fellowship at the Institute will be devoted to researching and writing a feature film titled In Other Words, the fictional story of R, a Lebanese man who works as a prison visitor to Guantanamo. Several times a year, R visits the detainees, scrupulously listening to their stories, and then travels to the Middle East to give oral feedback to their families, and bring their stories back to the prisoners. In recent months, he has started to slip up, transgress, inserting himself into the stories rather than simply transmitting them. Some of his alterations (lies? fictions?) serve to cheer up a session. Others seem gratuitous, random, even perverse. This unconscious shift runs parallel to a profound disruption in R’s own life…

Eric Baudelaire is an artist and filmmaker based in Paris. After training as a political scientist, Baudelaire established himself as a visual artist with a research-based practice in several media ranging from printmaking, photography, and the moving image to installation, performance, and letter writing. His feature films have circulated widely in film festivals. When shown within exhibitions, the films are presented within broader installations that include curated projects with works in other media and extensive discursive programs. He was awarded the 2019 Marcel Duchamp prize, and published a monograph titled Make, Do, With with Paraguay Press in 2023.