Thursday, March 13 – Sunday, March 30
GOLDBERG'S VARIATIONS
Ismaël JOFFROY CHANDOUTIS
Chapelle de l’Oratoire
Opening hours:
Tuesday to Saturday, 1pm to 7pm
Sunday from 2pm to 6pm
Free access
This post is also available in: Français (French)
The work:
Goldberg’s variations explores the complex personality of Joshua Rye Goldberg, one of the most prolific and influential trolls in Internet history. Jihadist, neo-Nazi, radical feminist, activist: these are the many masks worn by this 20-year-old American who, from his room in Florida, has taken the art of online provocation to its extreme.
This portrait takes the form of an immersive installation that reconstructs Joshua’s room, immersing the viewer in his universe. At the heart of the installation, a video presents a present-day confession, punctuated by back-and-forth shifts between past and present through reanimated flashbacks in the discussion, reminiscent of works like El Sicario Room 164 or The Video Diaries of Ricardo Lopez. Joshua’s representation is a fluid deepfake, subtly oscillating between genders, with his voice shifting from child to woman, from man to non-binary, akin to Kendrick Lamar’s music video.
Credits:
2025 / VIDEOFORMES Production
The artist:
Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis is a French artist renowned for his work on cinema, contemporary art, and post-photography. Using a range of digital tools, the artist creates works in a documentary style with hybrid forms (video, installation, live performance…). His works explore the themes of digital identity, memory, and more generally, the transformations brought about by technologies in the post-truth era. They question the invisible and the unspeakable, the process of producing “reality,” and the interstices between the real and the virtual.
By using gaming technologies such as Unreal or Deepfake (generative artificial intelligence), Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis contributes to questioning the limits of post-internet documentary cinema and the trend of media convergence. These artistic gameplays are all areas of expression for the profound subjects that shock our society. His methodology leads him to consider technology as a continuous process of research and experimentation that is part of his work. In Swatted (2018), the artist hacks images that he creates and captures in real-time while playing a video game. By modifying the graphic rendering, he removes textures from certain areas to obtain a wireframe aesthetic, which he then uses to stage stories of online players.
Artist’s website: https://www.instagram.com/ismael_jchandoutis/
Artist PORTRAIT:
MORE INFORMATIONS...
Interview by Fanny Bauguil (VIDEOFORMES relay teacher)
- How would you describe your installation? What will we see and hear?
This immersive installation tells the true story of Joshua Ryne Goldberg, a person who invented several identities for himself on the Internet. On the floor, you’ll discover a large interactive map inspired by Mark Lombardi’s “Narrative Structures”. This graphic map allows you to explore the links between Joshua, his many personas, journalists, adversaries and allies, as well as the internet platforms on which he has acted. Navigating this map triggers the appearance of detailed information on another screen: each dot reveals a specific message written by Joshua, under a persona he was playing at the time, and the repercussions it had. At the same time, a sound installation broadcasts Joshua’s confessions, taken from our actual exchanges with him: it’s his voice that guides and articulates the entire data exploration.
This installation uses datavisualization as an artistic terrain, beyond a simple statistical or scientific representation. It dialogues directly with Joshua himself, articulating his story through more than 5,000 pages of texts taken from actual exchanges with him.
- Is this the first time this installation has been presented to the public? How did you create this work?
Yes, this is the first time it’s been presented. I first collected around 40,000 messages written by Joshua, then designed a database to structure the data and analyze it to bring out a meaning, a narrative, a problematic, a mental universe. At the same time, I engaged in exchanges with Joshua, first in prison and then by meeting him on his release, thus producing a large quantity of texts (over 5,000 pages), which serve as the basis for the sound part of the installation.
- Which artists or works have inspired you?
This installation is inspired by Mark Lombardi’s “Narrative Structures”, which visualized complex networks in an artistic and informative way. I’m also inspired by the data analyses that emerged in journalism in the 2010s, and by artists like Disnovation and the Forensic Architecture group. Joshua’s character evokes figures like the Joker, Elliott from “Mr. Robot” or the protagonist of “A Scanner Darkly”. Other more specific references to his film and video culture are also included, notably from video games such as “Yume Nikki” and films such as “Joker” and “Mr Robot”. You’ll also discover the many references throughout his posts under his persona of film and video game critic.
- How did you go about creating this work? Can you tell us a little about your creative process?
I began by methodically collecting and structuring the 40,000 posts written by Joshua. I then developed a narrative and interactive datavisualization, in the spirit of Mark Lombardi’s work. The sound device was constructed from the many hours of interviews and thousands of pages of texts exchanged with Joshua, to give a sensitive and intimate dimension to the experience.
- A few keywords that would go well with your installation?
Datavisualization, immersion, internet, post-truth, manipulation, social networks, avatars, narrative, digital identity, artistic investigation, mental universe, counter-factuality.
- A few words about your artistic career? When did you first become interested in digital art?
My artistic career is structured around cinema, contemporary art and digital technologies. Early on, during my studies at INSAS (editing) and Sint-Lukas (directing) in Belgium, then at Le Fresnoy in France, I began to integrate digital art into my practice. My hybrid, multidisciplinary work explores the porous border between reality and fiction, memory and technology.
- Do you manage to make a living from your creative activity?
Yes, today I manage to make a living from my artistic activity thanks to my film creations, my contemporary art exhibitions, the courses, workshops and lectures I give and the collaborations I carry out with other artists, as well as the support of numerous public institutions.