Pierre Huyghe makes art out of the rights of individuals. His work’s a romantic parry against what could be called the virtual slavery of copyright laws, under which your voice, your life story, and your identity can be bought and sold for their entertainment value. In two new videos, Huyghe reunites the disembodied voice of the French Snow White with its rightful owner and grants the last word to the bank robber played by Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon. For an upcoming project–an animated manga–Huyghe bought the rights to a Japanese character named AnnLee, whom he plans to set free in the public domain.
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In the three-minute, 17-second video Blanche Neige Lucie Huyghe champions the cause of French singer Lucie Dolene, who voiced the lines and sang the lyrics of the lead character in the 1962 French version of Walt Disney’s 1937 animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Huyghe films Dolene on a Paris soundstage as she sings and hums “Someday My Prince Will Come,” and places her account of dealing with Walt Disney–“a delightful man, very attentive”–in English subtitles at the bottom of the screen.
“It’s not about hating Disney,” says the 37-year-old Huyghe. “Disney is simply the symptom of cultural domination. The sign you see the most is the sign you react to or attack.” Huyghe doesn’t wish to be identified as one of those Gaullist “intellos” who rail against Mickey as an icon of Yankee imperialism.
Movie critic Janet Maslin called the character based on Wojtowicz a “complicatedly unhappy man” and Roger Ebert called him “one of the most interesting modern movie characters.” However, you won’t be able to see Wojtowicz as himself setting the record straight as he sees it–including his accusation that the FBI tried to kill him because live TV coverage of the bank robbery bumped Richard Nixon’s nomination speech at the Republican Convention in Miami off the air–until Warner Brothers’ vice president of licensing OKs the clips or Huyghe’s counsel can prove the minute and a half of footage qualifies as fair use. The Renaissance Society has postponed the debut of The Third Memory, originally scheduled to screen March 12 through April 23. Meanwhile, Lucie Dolene coos “Un jour mon prince viendra” as Blanche Neige Lucie plays in a continuous loop through June 25 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago. Call 312-280-2660.
