Johan Grimonprez
Johan Grimonprez is a critically acclaimed filmmaker and writer.
Who owns our imagination in a world of existential vertigo where truth has become a shipwrecked refugee? Is it the storyteller who can contain contradictions, who can slip between the languages we have been given to become a time-traveler of the imagination?
Johan Grimonprez’s critically acclaimed work dances on the borders of theory and practice, between art and cinema, beyond the dualisms of documentary and fiction, other and self, mind and brain to weave new pathways and stories, emphasizing a multiplicity of realities. Informed by an archeology of present-day media, his work depicts intimate stories that brush up against the bigger picture of globalization. It questions our collective imagination and the contemporary sublime, one framed by a fear industry that has infected political and social dialogue.
Johan Grimonprez’s latest feature Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat is Oscar® nominated for Best Documentary Feature and has premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where it won theCinematic Innovation Award and further garnered the Persistence of Vision Award at SFFilm and the Audience Award at Thessaloniki Film Festival. Previous films inclue dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997), Looking for Alfred (2005), Double Take (2009) and Shadow World (2016).
Grimonprez’s curatorial projects have been exhibited at museums worldwide, including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; and MoMA. His works are in the collections of Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; and Tate Modern, London. His artwork is represented by the Sean Kelly Gallery (New York).
He lectured widely, among others at the University de Saint-Denis (Paris 8), Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics; Tate Modern; MoMA (New York); Columbia University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); the Parliament of Bodies of Documenta 14, and he participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, and currently lectures at School of Art HOGENT/KASK , Ghent.
