Alexandra Midal is a professor at the University of Art and Design HEAD in Geneva and Head of the Department of Critical Thinking at Ensci-Les Ateliers in Paris. A distinguished art and design historian, she combines practice and theory-based research as an artist-curator, theoretician and film essayist.
Her research explores the blind spots and grey areas of design history, as evident in her two latest books, The Murder Factory (Sternberg Press, 2023) and Design by Accident: For a New History of Design (Sternberg Press, 2019). She studied literature, architecture and art history at Princeton University (NJ) and in Paris, completing her doctoral thesis at Paris Sorbonne while a Rome Prize recipient in architecture at Villa Medici. She has curated a number of international exhibitions about visual culture, design, and politics, such as Top Secret: Cinema and Espionage and Tomorrow Now – When Design Meets Science Fiction. Her films, including Mind’s Eyes, Possessed, and Heaven is a State of Mind, have been screened in museums across the globe.
Is there a particular moment or experience that triggered the decision for the theme Double Agent?
Few years, ago while having a breakfast discussion with artist Thomas Demand, he devised the particularity of the representation of the governmental public figures of North Korea. He said that for a long time, they would use a visual representation of flowers to portray them in the public arena. I was right away fascinated by the way it could prove to be useful, as you can make them talk and appear as you want, even after their death. In this pre-AI mass media propaganda system, I was contemplating the political strategy within such a simple system, that was reenacting the dystopian Orwell’s seminal 1984 image appearance of deceased leaders. The concept of political manipulation by forms, and grey zones, is the core of all my research, from my exhibition on cinema, design and espionage : Top Secret to my books Subliminal on the Edge or Girls: Hypnotic Facism.
The perspective of a double language and the idea of a crypted message, or subtext, runs along every single medium and discipline from psychoanalysis to literature, from the small talk to politics, and of course from design to the visual arts. But to transfer this very question to feminism: in a time of truly worrying backlash against women, we need a call for urgency.
Interestingly, though flowers are one of the most common topics one comes across in regard to anti-capitalism and ecology within art and design, it is frequently omitted that behind the recurrent androcentric metonymy between a woman and a flower, and the commodification of women, feminists have invented a great number of secret languages within flowers to act and resist. As feminism is under attack , I believe it is time to explore and share all these issues with a large audience. And as Emma Pflieger from Studio Pflieger Foegle has worked on conspiracy theories with her acclaimed Flat Earth project entitled Keep it Flat, which endorsed the construction of propaganda, I invited her to join me for this project.
Are there any discoveries that have surprised you in preparation for the biennial?
The hidden existence of a snake in the Museum’s basement archives : Spooky !
What excites you the most about the BIO 28 Double Agent - Do You Speak Flower?
The Biennial narrative deals with surprise and discoveries. Opposed to the usual exhibitions that accumulate great works, and claim their statements and ideas, BIO28 is very open and works as a plot would. Lure, encryptions and evidence in various places will drive visitors to the opposite of passivity, as in one of the last sections of the show, they will face a surprising twist, and realize that the floral discourse works as a twofold ruse that has fooled them. The show respects and praises the intelligence of the visitor, and I can’t wait to see if it works, or not.
Do you speak Flower?
Don’t you know that a double Agent always keeps their secret?
Which book, film, and song do you recommend to future visitors of BIO28?
Book: Keith Melton and Robert Wallace, The official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception
Film: Jonathan Glazer, A Zone of Interest
Song: Miley Cyrus, Flowers
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Photography by: Valérie Szabo