The metamorphoses of Jean-Luc Godard’s last creative gesture.
A unique exploration of the final creative work of cinema’s great innovator, Jean-Luc Godard. This exhibition will see Godard’s last two films, including the UK premiere of his final work, Scénarios (2024), installed in the ICA’s upper galleries alongside his extensive creative notebooks, offering a rare glimpse into the artist’s reflective process, blurring the lines between film, visual art, and philosophy.
Jean-Luc Godard devoted the final years of his life to the realisation of a project he described as his ultimate work, initially titled Scénario and later renamed Scénarios just a week before his voluntary death in September 2022. The project was, at times, ambitious and multifaceted—a film, an exhibition, an opera—and at others, more focused, confronting the ageing body and the horizon of death. It both extended the creative path he had established with The Image Book (2018) and marked a radical departure from it.
The project initially seemed infinite, driven by a life of creation that continually pushed its limits, yet it ultimately took a precise form: the film Scénarios.
Scénario(s) invites viewers on a journey through the traces of this final creative gesture. It begins with the screening of Scénarios (18 min), completed in the last days of Godard’s life, and Exposé du film annonce du film “Scénario” (36 min), an earlier work that delves into the thought processes behind the film. In this long sequence shot, Godard’s hands and voice expose the film to come, immersing the viewer in the heart of an idea still in formation. The exhibition then moves to the five creative notebooks Godard assembled to reflect and transmit his project, presenting page-by-page reproductions that visitors can explore in detail, offering an unprecedented look into his meticulous, tactile method of “thinking with hands”.
Mitra Farahani, Jean-Luc Godard’s producer, reflects:
“These notebooks bear witness to the physical process of research, wherein, like a painter, Godard assembles and collages images, texts, ideas, and references. This initial method of conceptualising the film is plastic and almost geographical, representing Godard’s search for a singular language. In the face of imminent death and the frailty it brings, he continued to “think with his hands”, which Denis de Rougemont describes in The Image Book as “the true condition of man”. The function of the notebooks is not merely preparatory; they are complete objects in their own right, assembled by Godard himself and balanced between the care given to their finish and their inherent transitory nature. They capture an instant of the creative process and invite viewers to engage with the profound, raw documentation of his final artistic metamorphosis.”
This special exhibition provides a unique opportunity for visitors to explore the final creative gesture of one of the most significant artists of the last century, tracing the myriad metamorphoses that led to its creation.
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