The nineteen segments of Magister (Latin for “Teacher”) were developed following an earlier video, Main-mise, main-levée, main-morte [Seizure, Release, Dead Hand] (1984), which explored, in a highly theatrical register, various oratorical styles drawn from late-night cultural television shows. The episodes of Magister fall more clearly within the realm of television pastiche. They are separated by “interludes”—photographs or shots unrelated to the content— much like what was common in 1970s television broadcasts. The sets, Éric Duyckaerts’s slicked-back, shoulder-length hair, and his chosen dress code project a falsely whimsical—and thus romantic—Parisian elegance, evoking the figure of a self-satisfied left-wing ‘intellectual.’ Often adopting a caricatural tone, the artist deploys a variety of speech modes and metalinguistic registers. He draws on different disciplines—law, mathematics, the history of technology, anthropology, and literature—to address topics such as color, oil painting, watercolor, and the ready-made, using deliberately pompous reasoning and absurd arguments. The quasi-improvised delivery, paired with the intentionally pretentious tone, lends the work an almost slapstick or schoolboy-like humor.

As with much of Duyckaerts’s practice, nothing in Magister is arbitrary. Its humor is genuinely critical, and moments of aesthetic insight often arise where one least expects them. As he put it, “Questions of bilateral symmetry and frontality, so important in aesthetic terms, are one of the guiding threads that I would return to later”. [1]

The video was shot over the course of a week in short sequences, each scripted the day before filming, by a team of three. Some scenes were filmed in borrowed apartments, others outdoors in public parks. Duyckaerts recalled frequent interruptions caused by fits of laughter shared with his collaborators.

Marie Muracciole, November 2020

Translated by Laurie Hurwitz

[1] Artist’s statement.