© Chloé Magdelaine

As part of this Dérives talk, Valentin Noujaïm looks back at the driving forces behind his work, both filmic and visual, which examines the power relations issues in French society through the prism of a strong ideal: revolutionary love or the love of revolution.

Valentin Noujaïm's work focuses on three themes: compressed lives, forgotten lives and deformed lives. He gives life to marginal and strange characters in sometimes fantastical worlds, mixing DV, 16mm and digital formats and sometimes using special effects.

With Madeleine Planeix-Crocker, associate curator at Lafayette Anticipations.
Valentin Noujaïm is a French-Lebanese artist and filmmaker, a graduate of the Screenwriting Department at La Fémis and a former guest student at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main (Germany).

His practice explores contemporary forms of political, social and architectural collapse, and their intimate resonances. Through film and installation, he develops hybrid devices combining fiction, documentary and archives.

He is the author of the trilogy La Défense (Pacific Club, 2022; To Exist Under Permanent Suspicion, 2024; Demons to Diamonds, 2025), presented at MoMA (US), CPH:DOX (DK), IFFR (NL), the Centre Pompidou (FR), the National Gallery of Art (US), the ICA London (UK) and the Kunsthalle Basel (CH), where he presented his first institutional solo exhibition in 2025.

His works have also been shown at the Istanbul Biennial (TR), the Fondation Cartier (FR), Visions du Réel (CH), the Thessaloniki Biennial (GR) and DocLisboa (PT). His works are included in public and private collections, including the CNAP (FR), the FRAC Bretagne (FR) and Lafayette Anticipations (FR).

Madeleine Planeix-Crocker is Curator of Performance and Live Arts at Lafayette Anticipations. Since 2021, she has held the positions of the « Troubles, alliances et esthétiques » co-Chair and professor of art theory at the Beaux-Arts de Paris.

Madeleine received her Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University before pursuing a Masters in « Media, Arts and Creation » at HEC Paris and a Master 2 in gender and performance studies at the EHESS. There, she led an arts-based research project with the nonprofit Women Safe, where she continues to facilitate a creative writing and theatre workshop. Madeleine is currently completing her PhD at the EHESS ; her dissertation research examines contemporary methods for devising performance in France.

Her most recent writing can be found in CURA., OnCurating, SwitchOn Paper, and EarthKeepingEarthShaking. She has curated two group shows : Spine at GIANNI MANHATTAN as part of Curated by (Vienna, 2024), as well as Scabs at the Mécènes du Sud (Montpellier, 2023). Madeleine pursues her training in contemporary dance.