The Host and the Cloud

The Host and the Cloud (2009-2010) was filmed over the course of a year in the disused building that once housed The National Museum of Arts and Popular Traditions (Musée national des Arts et Traditions Populaires) in Paris. ‘The Host and the Cloud’ experiment was a real situation that occurred in a closed folk museum which lies at the far end of an attraction park. It was witnessed live by an audience and partially recorded on three days: Halloween, Valentine’s Day and May Day. The experiment was conceived for a group of actors placed under certain conditions, facing influences they could alter and metabolize. It was created as a game of roles. The roles and behaviors of the actors, here the personnel of the museum, are changing through their encounters with the collection of displays, situations and fragmented narratives. The actors are subjected to the influence of interpreters of our recent history and/or archetypical professional performers. ‘The Host and the Cloud’ is a tale, a journey in the mind of an absent subject. The fictional character that appears in the film is the alter ego, the actuality in the mental landscape of this absent subject. A white rabbit wanders through the film of his imagination.