From September 1, 2023, the artist Assoukrou Aké will develop his Animque project as part of an artist residency at the Académie de France in Madrid at the Casa de Velàzquez, for the year 2023-2024.
"Animique seeks to deconstruct the magical charge we confer on digital objects, both profane and sacred, in our everyday rituals.
At the crossroads of disciplines, poetic, philosophical and psychoanalytical discourses enter into dialogue to identify the construction of what Assoukrou Ake defines as the animic apparatus. From African statuary - charged with mystery and the intangible - to automatons endowed with artificial intelligence, via the study of Hispanic and Francophone folk tales and mythological narratives, the aim is to explore the mechanisms of domination exercised by a thought inhabited by a belief that claims to be superior or sacred.
Animique, a multi-disciplinary visual arts project, will take the form of a series of filmed exchanges, from which large-scale mixed-media collages and a performative sculpture will derive, taking up the very principle of the animated object, i.e. its possession by a soul."
