The Skeptics - Study of an Optical Phenomenon

The atmosphere is thick and clay-like. Behind a reddish-ochre mist, a rocky landscape is barely visible. Presented as polyptychs, the images follow one another, burning or vanishing in a blinding flash. 

In the sky, the trajectory of an unidentified object appears. Its descent seems continuous, unrelenting. It’s as if this meteorite-like object will never reach the ground: it leaves behind nothing but a trail of smoke that lends itself to fiction. David De Beyter’s work transports us to the geological site of Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, where ancient beliefs and rituals intertwine. Through a multimedia installation featuring photographs, archival images, and an immersive video installation set to a drone music soundtrack, the artist recreates the narrative of a contemporary mythology—that of UFOs—in order to better deconstruct it. 

His practice resembles documentary art or a photographic form of reenactment, as he bases his research on a preexisting amateur discipline: scientific ufology. This pseudoscience dedicated to the study of UFOs brings together a community of “skeptics". These enthusiasts question the photographic medium—which is inevitably subject to accidents—and sometimes interpret it as evidence of extraterrestrial life. 

When he works on an image—whether in the darkroom or digitally—David De Beyter engages in a dialogue with the ufological archive. He reenacts its errors and revisits the motifs characteristic of scientific ufology research: a dazzling spot, a streak of light, or an indistinctly shaped flying object. Every gesture made here performatively questions the captured reality and the notion of “truth" as the interpretation we project onto it. 

↘︎ Text by Luce Cocquerelle-Giorgi, art critic and independent curator, member of the Jeunes Critiques d’Art collective 

↘︎ Curating: Anne Lacoste, Director of the Institut pour la photographie