In an international context profoundly marked by rising violence, armed conflict, mass surveillance and forms of repression still active in many parts of the world, this performance asks a simple and essential question: where has love gone?
Where is the love? is a performative project that seeks to restore the centrality of the experience of love in public space. Over the course of a week, in the same place at the same time, an amorous encounter takes place and is filmed by a video surveillance camera, installed on purpose. The device hijacks the tool of anonymous control and observation, turning it into a sensitive witness to a moment of intimacy, fragility and humanity.
The aim here is not to re-enact a sentimental scene, but to activate a form of contemporary ritual, an act both discreet and exposed, in which love manifests itself as poetic resistance to the brutality of reality. This performance proposes a form of inverted catharsis: it is no longer violence that is staged to exorcise it, but love that is exposed, in order to reintroduce connection, presence and sensitivity into a world saturated with fear and separation.
The project takes an itinerant form, anchoring itself in a variety of urban and social contexts. Each edition is conceived in close connection with the geography of the site, its dynamics of control, visibility and interaction in the public space. In 2025, a new activation of the performance is scheduled for autumn in Paris. Thanks to a live webcasting system, the event will be visible from the four corners of the globe.
We are now submitting this project to the Laguna Prize in Venice, convinced that this international artistic platform can offer a strong visibility and resonance to this proposal. Bringing love to the heart of an event such as this is to assert the need to make it an active force in the collective imagination, a political and poetic gesture in equal measure.
