Echoes of Tomorrow

In a dreamlike universe with codes close to a documentary, Matthieu Gafsou, Alice Pallot and the De Anima collective beckon us to reflect on the living and the bond that human beings have with nature. Between macro-ecology and the observation of the infinitely small, these three artistic projects form a whole through which we can perceive the original and ultimate force of nature as it unfolds in a network - a powerful and resilient "interlinked whole".

The unraveling of the world is shown by the Swiss photographer Matthieu Gafsou in a relational and human trope. As part of the Résidence 1+2 “Photographie et sciences” in Toulouse, Alice Pallot focuses on the problem of toxic algae in Brittany ("green algae"). The highlight of her series, a video entitled "Anoxie verte" plunges us among the tiny forms of life that can endure this man-made plague.

The De Anima Collective takes us into a poetic concert of mushrooms, the result of scientific observation and a desire to break down barriers between the mediums...

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Selected artists

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De Anima

Oyster Mushrooms Orchestra

For the 2022 edition of Unbound (Unseen Amsterdam, NL), De Anima created the OMO (Oyster Mushroom Orchestra), an immersive photographic installation known as «bio-augmented», through which the collective establishes a dialogue between the image and the living. It focuses in particular on the mode of communication of mushrooms, which organize themselves in a network thanks to their mycelium. This network is represented by the projection of animated macrophotographs of oyster mushrooms, which are combined with a culture of mushrooms on beer grains, connected to electrodes. The mushrooms convert the frequencies of the electrical signals passing through them into sound waves. Music composed in real time by the mushrooms and orchestrated by De Anima is played through a parabolic speaker made of mycelium.

De Anima is a collective founded in 2019 between Paris and Brussels (FR/BE). Composed of artists, craftsmen and researchers (Alexandre Carril, Raphaëlle Carril, Jimme Cloo, Guillaume Duclos, Adrien Gelin, Alphonse Maitrepierre, Alice Pallot), it works on multidisciplinary creations interacting architecture, design, fashion design, video, photography and biophysics. Through an experimental approach, and in a desire to decompartmentalise media, the collective explores the relationship that human beings have with nature and the living. Since its creation, it has been interested in the theme of the mushroom, its production and aesthetics (film Mycelia 753, 2020, Cité Maraîchère de Romainville - FR), but also its properties (installation Noir d’encre, 2022, Hangar).  

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Alice Pallot (FR)

(FR, 1995), lives and works between Brussels and Paris (BE/FR).

She studies photography at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels de La Cambre (ENSAV – La Cambre) (Brussels, BE), from which she graduated with master with honours in June 2018. That same year, she participated in an exchange programme at Ecole National d’art de Lausanne (ECAL) (Lausanne, CH) and won the Roger De Conynck prize. She has since then exhibited in European institutions and galleries.

In 2022, she participated in the group exhibition .tiff at the Fotomuseum Antwerpen (FOMU) (Antwerp, BE) as a prize winner. In 2023, she represents the emerging European photography in the FUTURES network, and is showing her work in a travelling group exhibition (Camera centro Italiano per la Fotografia (Turin), Copenhagen Photo Festival (Copenhagen), Fotofestiwal (Łodz)).

Alice Pallot has in parallel published the books entitled Land (2016), Himero (2020) and Suillus (2021, republished in 2022), and co-founded the De Anima collective. She delves into the links between the sciences developed by human beings and their impact on our constantly changing natural environment through expeditions and research, thereby pinpointing questions and ambiguities intrinsically linked to our time.

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Matthieu Gafsou (FR)

(CH/FR, 1981), lives and works in Lausanne (CH).

After earning a master’s degree in philosophy, literature and cinema at the University of Lausanne in 2006, he studied photography at the École d’arts appliqués de Vevey (CH) from which he graduated in 2008. The following year, he won the HSBC Foundation Prize for Photography. He has since taken part in numerous group exhibitions and has had several one-man shows internationally, including H+, on the theme of transhumanism, one of the highlights of the 2018 edition of Les Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles.

Matthieu Gafsou is a laureate of the Résidence 1+2 (Toulouse, FR) in 2019. He has penned six books, and teaches at the ECAL. He is also a founding member of the MAPS agency.

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