HODLER PRIZE SELECTION 2/3
Three books, one film, one exhibition, and one video game—we are delighted to present the second series of works selected by Ottessa Moshfegh, Théo Casciani, Precious Okoyomon, Jean-Max Colard and Hans Ulrich Obrist to compete for the Hodler Prize 003!
The vote and announcement of the winner will take place on April 8 in Paris.
‘UNCONSCIOUS/TELEVISION’
Author : Lucas Ferraço Nassif
Selected by Théo Casciani
Type : Book
Publisher : Becoming Press
Unconscious/Television is an essay by Lucas Ferraço Nassif that I discovered a few weeks ago on the recommendation of my friend Arca, and which I immediately found absolutely brilliant: brilliant in its ambition to defend the hypothesis of multiple unconsciouses by confronting psychoanalytic tradition with references as varied as Pokemon, David Lynch and Rei Kawakubo; brilliant in the freedom with which the author explores cultural phenomena and resists the abundance of content; brilliant, finally, in its bold and cinematic form, which reinvents academic standards to make them as appealing as a television program.
‘THE UGLY STEPSISTER’
Author: Emilie Blichfeldt
Selected by Ottessa Moshfegh
Type : Film
Production : Mer Film
‘The Ugly Stepsister merits recognition in narrative for how unsparingly it revises the Cinderella story by restoring its original brutality. Blichfeldt draws on the Grimms’ version of the fairy tale, where mutilation, punishment, and bodily sacrifice are explicit, and reorients our sense of how that violence was later sanitized and resold as a fantasy of idealized feminity: the servant princess whose obedience is rewarded with beauty, safety, and love. By shifting the point of view from Cinderella to the ugly stepsister, the narration digs deeper, past the romanticization of a glow-up transformation; the film treats beauty as a system of labor, enforced through instruction, discipline, and pain. The body horror is precise and procedural, never indulgent, and its emotional restraint is devastating.’ Ottessa Moshfegh
‘JAWFILLER’
Authors : Maz Murray and Charlie Mark Breiter
Selected by Precious Okoyomon
Type: Book
Publisher : Montez Press
‘I loved the timeliness of this book and the two authors together making a world not so far from our own, where the digital realm could actually be a form of freedom. It thinks through the rise of anti-trans culture and the internet not only as a place of safety but maybe a new body. It was so fun to read and I love two people writing a book together. So genius.’ Precious Okoyomon
‘You don’t need dysphoria to be trans. You don’t need a body at all.’
« When Detective Sean Hastings is asked to investigate the disappearance of Character, he enters the First Trans Commune in Sim World, a virtual reality cult community imagineered by transfluencer Kevin, and bankrolled by a mysterious tech company, VSI.
Haunted by the death of his cis gay guy college bestie and their shared diasporic dilemmas, Taylor, VSI’s token QTPOC face, sees potential in Kevin’s ability to Release trauma into the virtual world. Meanwhile, Casey, Sean’s ex, hopes Releasing will cure their Long Plague. Then femme fatale Mitchelle reappears. And the plot twists. A pulpy neo-noir romp through the anxiously assimilated transmasculine id, Jaw Filler asks: who is VSI, and what do they really want? Can you be your own dad? And if Character’s mind is trapped in Sim World, then where is his body? » Montez Press
‘PERMANENT HYMNS’
Author: David Douard
Selected by Jean Max-Colard
Type: Exhibition
Galery: Chantal Crousel
« A contemporary artist who combines sculpture, collage, video, sound, drawing, installation, and text, David Douard is the creator of a disturbing and complex body of work, disrupted by the schisms, neuroses, and viralities of today’s world. The artist finds inspiration in contradictory cultural references: poetry, the history of science, technology, animism, and counterculture. While his work is not directly narrative, like that of a novelist or screenwriter, David Douard approaches storytelling as a propagation, somewhere between illness and rumor, full of viral images, matrix texts, hybrid sculptures, mutant scripts, and programmatic bugs.
Notably revealed by a solo exhibition, “Mo’Swallow” at the Palais de Tokyo in 2014, curated by Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel, David Douard is now a leading figure in the field of contemporary art, as evidenced by his latest solo exhibition, “Permanent Hymns” at the Chantal Crousel Gallery in Paris. » Jean Max-Colard
‘PRIVATE I, A MEMOIR’
Author: Lynn Hershman Leeson
Selected by Hans Ulrich Obrist
Type: Book
Publisher: ZE Books
« An extraordinary book published by an artist. A memoir which is not linear at all. It’s kind of a dynamic archive. That’s what I like so much about it. There are mouvements, there are technologies, there are different identities, there is also resistance in it. The book is like performative object of our life written by an artist who has always been ahead of our time. Super pioneering. One of the first artist who worked with A.I, touchscreen,.. adressing new technologies and themes like surveillance, artificial intelligence, art and cinema, problematics of visibility, the artist in the age of big data… It’s a super innovative form of doing a memoir because it’s always oscillating between the very personal, culture and history, alter egos, childhood,.. It’s a biography of an artist who is many. Lynn Hershman is many. It’s a time capsule of the future really. It shows avatars, databases, and machine intelligence at super early stage. Her work is also very connected to the assistance and collaboration between the artist, the institution and the machine. » Hans Ulrich Obrist
‘DEATH STRANDING 2 : ON THE BEACH’
Author : Hideo Kojima
Selected by Théo Casciani
Type: Video Game
Publisher: Sony Interactive
« Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is the latest work by Hideo Kojima, a singular genius of video-games but also contemporary storytelling. I chose this work from a deeply personal place: during my teenage years, as a player, I must admit it was through his games that I dived into writing and started thinking about becoming an author. Blending speculative fiction, political allegory, and intimate solitude, On the Beach expands the possibilities of what digital worlds can express and unfolds a new grammar, using interactivity as a language to create connection in a fractured world. » Théo Casciani
We would like to thank our partners who made this third edition of the Hodler Prize possible.
Since 1977, the Centre Pompidou has been a hub of vibrant, engaged culture—a multidisciplinary center deeply rooted in the city and open to the world. The Centre Pompidou is undergoing a transformation that will allow it to remain active during the renovation of its building, until its reopening in 2030. At the same time, the spirit of the Centre Pompidou will be embodied in numerous partner venues throughout France and internationally, thanks to the Constellation program. The installation of the Centre Pompidou cinemas at mk2 Bibliothèque × Centre Pompidou establishes a new venue for thinking about and sharing moving images in a different way, where the dialogue between creation, society, and thought continues, far from the building but at the heart of what makes up the spirit of the Centre.
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Dīcēs is a communication agency and independent brand that brings words to life. It works with publishing houses, cultural institutions, and brands. Dīcēs also develops its own formats for sharing content, including a weekly newsletter that opens with a quote and an Instagram account dedicated to posting quotes every day.