elvisrevivalportrait

Julien Roby

Positive that the automobile industry would inevitably decline, at the end of the 1970s he invented a machine to convey stories and poems. Emphatically denying what his close friends deemed a sure failure, he stubbornly insisted on perfecting his invention, brazenly scheming to market the first low-cost model at the turn of the century. In 2011 a friend questioned his progress on this project. He replied that he never specified which century he meant, and suggested that consumers turn to other products while waiting for his storymobile…

Locked inside the workshop where he is the only keyholder, he works meticulously on his prototypes. Each technical and/or futile improvement provides new discoveries. Each discovery leads to the drafting of a paper, which finds its place of record in a pile of papers of all sizes, that perfectly protects the table from any dust motes that could drift in the air. So it is, with this table resisting the incursion of time, while the other workshop furniture submits to inexorable degradation. Perhaps the day will come, when the walls and the door and the key also take their turn to be chipped away. The wind will then blow all the paper from the table, which could finally age like everything else.

 

 

EDUCATION & PROFESSION:
2001: HES degree in Design and Visual Communication (with the Swiss Canton Fund of Modern Art Prize) at the Geneva University of Art and Design.
2004: postgraduate HES degree in New Media, Geneva University of Art and Design.
2007: postgraduate degree at Fresnoy, the National Modern Art Studio in Tourcoing.
Actually: working in independent filmmaking, directing, operating on camera and editing, and seriously continuing his artistic work.

News