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Jacques Perconte

video , printen (2D) , natuur , internationaal , installatie , film , Experimenteel , Ecologie , Documentair , Digitaal , Audiovisueel

Jacques Perconte (b. 1974, Grenoble, France) is a French artist and filmmaker. Since the 1990s, he has developed an experimental practice spanning linear and generative films, installations, audiovisual performances and prints, moving between cinemas, exhibition spaces and the stage.

From Normandy to the Alps, from Scotland to the Dutch polders, he films the elements. His landscapes emerge from the encounter between the delicate rhythms of the natural world and the technical fabric of digital images. In dialogue with the history of painting and cinema, his work opens up new ways of perceiving colour, movement and matter.
Through reverse engineering and the manipulation of video compression, coding and storage processes, Perconte reclaims audiovisual technologies as artistic tools. His research pushes the moving image beyond the limits imposed by industrial design. Technology is never an end in itself: ecology and the Anthropocene frame a practice in which the image becomes an environment, questioning our presumed separation from nature.

His work has been shown internationally at numerous festivals, including Rotterdam, Tribeca and Oberhausen, and at institutions such as MoMA, Centre Pompidou, Jeu de Paume and Schirn Kunsthalle. His films have been the subject of several retrospectives, most notably at the Cinémathèque française (2014–15). Solo exhibitions include Le Lieu Unique (2023), Le Générateur (2024), Abbaye de Noirlac (2024–25), Musée Michel Ciry (2026) and Galerie Charlot (2012–15, 2023, 2025; forthcoming in 2027).

He has collaborated with musicians including Jeff Mills (2013–15), Jean-Benoît Dunckel of Air (2015–20), Mikhail Rudy, ONCEIM orchestra, and contributed to Leos Carax's Holy Motors. Jean-Luc Godard used his film Après le feu in Le Livre d’image. With composer Othman Louati, the company Miroirs Étendus, he created the video opera Faust in 2017 and returned to the operatic form with Solaris in 2026.

https://www.jacquesperconte.com/JP_CV_26.pdf

À fleur de forêt (Aan de rand van het bos)
À fleur de forêt (Aan de rand van het bos) | 2026 - Presented as part of the Normandie Impressionniste 2026 festival, *À fleur de forêt* brings together several series of unique digital prints on paper and a video triptych. The works grew out of a residency begun in June 2025 and filming carried out in Varengeville-sur-Mer in spring and autumn. The exhibition develops the idea of a “possible garden” between land and sea. Varengeville-sur-Mer is known for its gardens and for the long history of botanical passion that has shaped them. The works focus on their edges, where the garden ends and nature begins, and on places that seem to erase the boundary between cultivated order and the vibrant disorder of the woods. Openings of light move through the trees, sometimes revealing the sea. Here, the Normandy landscape is marked by the sudden confrontation between the flat expanse of the sea and the land rising vertically from it. At Varengeville, trees and woods stand above chalk cliffs more than eighty metres high. These cliffs are also fragile, and successive collapses carry the pale limestone, streaked with flint, into the water. The greens and blues reflected by the sky become milky, producing an endless variation of colours. The woods contain many century-old trees. Protected from the wind by their trunks and branches, remarkable gardens have been shaped over several decades. The prints and the video triptych emerge from these crossings between vegetation, light, geology and sea. The works do not seek to document or describe the places that were filmed. They present images from Varengeville as windows and mirrors, allowing the experience of seeing to continue within them. The body of the image becomes a field of vibration in which light appears to pass through matter. Every image in the exhibition was filmed rather than photographed. What each image contains is the time that passed in front of the camera. This recorded duration remains present in the video triptych and within the unique prints, where movement and transformation are gathered into a single image. The exhibition is presented with the support of Galerie Charlot. It forms part of the focus on the Dutch art scene, with the support of the Mondriaan Fund and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The exhibition is curated by Aurélie Giraud, Director of the Musée Michel Ciry. The prints are produced by Tony Nathan at Oppa Studio, Rotterdam. The frames are made by Nicolas André in Offranville. 16 May to 1 November 2026 Musée Michel Ciry, Espace Créations Varengeville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France https://www.museemichelciry.com
À fleur de mer
À fleur de mer | 2026 - À fleur de mer (2026) Vlak boven zee / Bloemen boven zee eenkanaals digitale video, 48 min., kleur, originele soundtrack, basis 5 m dansende compressies van videogegevens, met de hand gemonteerd Al bijna twintig jaar keert Jacques Perconte terug naar Normandië. Alles wat je hier ziet, is gefilmd: de krijtrotsen, de kam, de bloemen aan de rand van de afgrond en het schuim daaronder. In de beelden verstrijkt de tijd voor de camera. Het licht deint, de bloemen dwarrelen boven zee, de zee beweegt met de wind. Perconte bewerkt de digitale compressie van zijn beelden met de hand. Waar een codec zijn sporen doorgaans uitwist, maakt hij daarvan de materie van het werk. De groenen en blauwen gaan dansen tot ze melkachtig worden, in het verlengde van Monet. Hij werkt niet als een ingenieur, maar als een kok: hij maakt beelden om lief te hebben. De klif lijkt sterk, maar zijn kalksteen is kwetsbaar, en de instortingen volgen elkaar op. In die spanning herinnert de immense schoonheid van de natuur aan de oneindigheid van het leven en aan onze eigen eindigheid. Station Rouen, in het kader van het festival Normandie Impressionniste 2026, luik Focus Pays-Bas. Ontstaan uit een residentie in het Musée Michel Ciry, Varengeville-sur-Mer. Met steun van Normandie Impressionniste, MTCA, de SNCF, het Mondriaan Fonds en de Ambassade van het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in Frankrijk. À fleur de mer | Level with the Sea (2026) single-channel digital video, 48 min, colour, original soundtrack, base 5 m dancing compressions of video data, edited by hand For almost twenty years Jacques Perconte has returned to Normandy. Everything seen here is filmed: the chalk cliffs, the ridge, the flowers at the edge of the drop and the foam below. Within the images, time passes before the camera. The light oscillates, the flowers whirl above the sea, the sea moves with the wind. Perconte works the digital compression of his images by hand. Where a codec usually erases its traces, he makes them the matter of the work. The greens and blues begin to dance until they turn milky, in the lineage of Monet. He works not like an engineer but like a cook: he makes images in order to love. The cliff appears strong, yet its limestone is fragile, and the collapses follow one another. In that tension, the immense beauty of nature recalls the infinity of life and our own finitude. Rouen station, as part of the Normandie Impressionniste 2026 festival, Focus Netherlands strand. Created out of a residency at the Musée Michel Ciry, Varengeville-sur-Mer. https://www.normandie-impressionniste.fr/jacques-perconte-investit-la-gare-de-rouen-avec-a-fleur-de-mer/
Better Mont Blanc | 2025
Better Mont Blanc | 2025 - Two-channel 4K video installation or single-channel 8K video. Colour, 65 minutes. Stereo or quadraphonic sound AI super-resolution and experimental video compression. With support from the Jeu de Paume, Paris, and the Musée-Château d’Annecy. Better Mont Blanc is constructed from historical and contemporary images photographed and filmed on and around Mont Blanc, together with footage of the Hambach and Garzweiler lignite mines, foundries and nuclear power plants in France. The work begins with the mountain as a place that was once inaccessible, difficult and costly to reach. The history of mountaineering expeditions has gradually given way to the industrialisation of access and to mass tourism. Mont Blanc, like Everest on a global scale, has become congested. The installation explores the visual effects and theoretical implications of upscaling, one of the operations used by generative AI models to increase the definition of digital images. Two vertical 4K images form a single field of approximately 16.6 million pixels. The degree of detail perceived changes according to the viewer’s distance from the screens. Elements that appear as texture or visual noise from afar reveal figures, faces, machines and artefacts when approached. Historical photographs of the Alps pass through AI super-resolution processes and experimental video compression. They encounter contemporary images of glaciers, walkers, cable cars, mining excavators, industrial structures and flames from foundries. The images migrate from one screen to the other, dissolve into one another and are reconstructed through the internal movement of the video data. The melting of Alpine glaciers is placed in relation to the infrastructures and techniques used to extract and exploit terrestrial resources. The work connects the transformation of the mountain with the expansion, interconnection and standardisation of human activities. The image is accompanied by recordings of high-altitude winds, industrial sites and the electromagnetic fields produced by the computer while processing the AI upscaling operations. Better Mont Blanc considers the tension between the irreducible richness of sensory experience and the statistical approximation produced by generative AI. It questions ideas of progress, effort and the desire to appropriate a world that is disappearing before our eyes. → Le monde selon l’IA, Jeu de Paume, Paris, France, 11 April to 21 September 2025. General curator: Antonio Somaini. Associate curators: Ada Ackerman, Alexandre Gefen and Pia Viewing.→ The World Through AI, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Germany, 11 June to 20 September 2026. Curators: Antonio Somaini and Katharina Dohm.
The Effort, the World (l'Effort, le Monde)
The Effort, the World (l'Effort, le Monde) | 2024 - Single-channel large-scale projection, multichannel audio, 124', 2024. In his work created for Le Générateur, Jacques Perconte poignantly captures the essence of high mountain climbing, focusing on a group of climbers suspended between sky and stone. Their hearts beat in rhythm with their movements as they navigate a balance between two realms: the infinite and the immediate. "L’Effort, le monde" transforms the 400 m² of Le Générateur into a vast porthole, resembling the cabin of an extraordinary vessel exploring a landscape that can no longer be viewed without considering the relentless machine that fuels our existence. The work was filmed in the Alps, including the Mont-Blanc massif, Aiguilles Rouges, Haut-Griffe, Arves, and Écrins, as well as the Hambach open-pit mines and the ports of Dunkirk and Rotterdam.
Marée Métal
Marée Métal | 2023 - Six channel video, 185', 2023. In Marée métal, Jacques Perconte redefines image ecology, blending nature and industry into a fluid, organic experience. Spanning over three hours across six screens, the film invites viewers to immerse themselves, finding their own place within its shifting landscapes. Its immense success highlights the welcoming nature of Perconte’s visuals, which, rather than imposing a single perspective, open a poetic and sensitive realm of perception.
SILESILENCE | 2022
SILESILENCE | 2022 - Fillm, 15'40'', 2K Scope, colour, sound | Filmed after Jacques Perconte settled in Rotterdam, SILESILENCE begins at the window of an apartment before moving towards the city’s industrial port. Cargo ships, construction sites and steelworks form an obstructed horizon in which nature appears only through the movement of the sea, the wind and the flight of birds. Digital compression does not simply transform the recorded landscape. Chromatic eruptions, ruptures and structural dislocations reveal the noisy and chaotic character of this industrial environment. Red frequently spreads beyond the forms from which it emerges, covering the image as if its material were spilling across the screen. The architecture of buildings under construction echoes the matrix-like organisation of the digital image, while the transformations produced by compression follow the structures of the industrial landscape. Julien Desprez’s electroacoustic composition intensifies this movement. Sound, camera tremors and abrupt transitions produce a series of audiovisual disjunctions, as if the film were overheating, disconnecting and restarting. Moving pictorially from impressionism towards futurism, SILESILENCE does not celebrate industrial power. It exposes its instability and its potentially dysfunctional character. In the final movement, two birds rise above a building and lead the camera towards the sky. The image turns orange, pink and yellow before fading into white and then black. The film finally returns to the initial view from the Rotterdam apartment, confronting a world burning only a short distance from home.
Westerwoldezon (2021)
Westerwoldezon (2021) - Self-regenerating infinite film, single channel / Infinite duration. Colour. Stereo. Circular image within a square 1200 × 1200 pixel frame. Video file endlessly traversed in semi-random order by a real-time program. Dancing compressions of video data, edited on the fly. Production: Noorderlicht, Artphy. With the support of Mondriaan Fonds, Kunstraad Groningen and Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie. Nature's delicate rhythm and seeming softness contrast sharply with the technical format of digital images. But in 'Westerwoldezon', Jacques Perconte manages to create magical landscapes that resemble colourful fairy-tales by using reverse engineering of video compression algorithm. Together, the original image and the processing form a new nature, which is constantly in motion and ever-changing. By adopting a particular attitude towards technology as something that does not separate from nature, Perconte questions our relationship to landscape. Westerwoldezon is a self-regenerating infinite film. A simple program, written by the artist, endlessly traverses a specially prepared video file. It does not play it from beginning to end. It jumps from one point to another, in semi-random order. It does not alter the images. It writes the film's script on the fly. It chooses a starting point within the file and a duration for the shot. Before the shot ends, it calculates the next point and the next duration, and so on until the program is stopped. The playback itself produces the images. Each image updates the one before it. New forms and colours do not come from a cut. They grow out of what was already on screen. The film becomes a flow in constant modulation, made of passing visions that may never occur again.
15000ft | 2021 - Infinite film (generative video), single-channel, 2021 "You get the curious feeling that the mountains enclose you to keep you away from all the noise and cruelty of the world. "(1). Filmed while a private flight to Mont Blanc, this adventure to the summits offers us a rare view of many peaks threatened by the ice's disappearance that keeps them in balance. Carried away by the turbulent winds that prevent any uniform trajectory so close to the cliffs, the camera films according to the kinetic energy of the plane's movements. The images do not reflect well on what the heart and the imagination combine as energy to welcome the immensity of the view and the flight's magic. The impossibility of seeing the mountain seems to be overcome in the experience. But the images I bring back tell us that this challenge of technique against nature is thrown to the wind by the violence of the danger that lurks. In balance, the devices use all their strength to stabilise themselves; this paradoxical force is what remains on the screen. All these vectorial tensions that I was already releasing in Before the Collapse of Mont Blanc are released here, explored without time limits. The memory-images of this high-altitude flight without oxygen are intermingled in an infinite flow. Almost infinitely, the moments blend together to give new textures of the brutal beauty of these still snow-covered mountains. 1 John Ruskin, to George Richmond, 24 May 1849, Letters I, W 36, pp. 100-101. See also To His Father, 16 August 1851, W 36, p. 117: 'It is so strange to come back here again and again, and see the same flurries of snow on the crests of the needles. It is not surprising that the rocks remain unchanged. But the flurries of snow! "? This piece is an infinite film. It is a work that is generated as it is played. It is like a landscape that we visit regularly, and that changes over the days and seasons, whose colour and textures evolve with the light and time. The images were shot in March 2019 during a flight to explore the Mont Blanc massif on board a light aircraft. With the support of Centre Pompidou, Hors Pistes, https://www.jacquesperconte.com/oe?251
Before the Collapse of Mont Blanc | 2020 - Film, 16min, 2020. Dedicated to the eponymous Mont Blanc massif, the film is accompanied by the director Jacques Perconte's burning question of whether we happen to be the very last people who will ever have the chance to see MontBlanc's summit. It's all in response to the earth's rising temperatures, causing glaciers to melt at a rapid pace. Perconte's work is unique in the sense that in revealing the inner strength and pulsation of what is seen on screen, he combines plasticity that follows on the pictorial tradition inherited from painting and experimental film with documentary film rooted in a specific space. Film, 16 min, 2020 "Are we the very last to see the peaks of Mont Blanc? The heat of the summers and the mild winters have a lot to do with the rock falls, which have multiplied over the last twenty years. The mountains are collapsing. If this is a sign of climate change, it is also a sign of our attachment to the landscape, which we would like to classify as a heritage site. The Mont Blanc massif is not ours. The mountain is a state. It is a moment, it wasn't there millions of years ago, and it will change in any case. The problem here would be that of the speed of change. Because the equilibrium of these peaks defying the void, these glaciers' longevity is only our point of view. On the scale of the planet's motion, it's a vibration. Mountains are falling, and there's nothing we can do about it. And even if we have the means to rise to their height to admire them, surpass those inaccessible peaks where many explorers lost their lives trying to gain the privilege of overcoming them, the mountains will continue to fall as they continue to rise. If Mount Blanc falls, it also rises. " In his works, Perconte achieves a synthesis in which he finds a response to dialectical tension between the modern concept of techne and physis. These digits of the algorithm are part of the artistic environment, which is tense but also balanced at the same time. J. Sarmiento Hinojosa https://www.jacquesperconte.com/oe?244

Jacques Perconte – À fleur de mer

Datum:
Locatie: Rouen-Rive-Droite Train Station, Place Bernard Tissot, 76000 Rouen, Frankrijk
In samenwerking met: Normandie Impressionniste, SNCF Gares & Connexions, Mondriaan Fonds, Ambassade van het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in Frankrijk

Jacques Perconte presenteert À fleur de mer, een monumentale immersieve video-installatie in de Gare de Rouen-Rive-Droite, als onderdeel van Normandie Impressionniste 2026. De projectie brengt bloemen, zee en licht samen in een voortdurend veranderend digitaal landschap. Het werk ontstond tijdens een residentie in Varengeville-sur-Mer en maakt deel uit van de focus op de Nederlandse kunstscene.

https://www.normandie-impressionniste.fr/jacques-perconte-investit-la-gare-de-rouen-avec-a-fleur-de-mer/

AI Ecologies

Datum:
Locatie: Kunsthal ARTphy
In samenwerking met: Kunsthal ARTphy, Mondriaan Fund. Curated by Peter van der Putten and Roland van Dierendonck.

Group exhibition examining how artificial intelligence changes our perception of nature, technology and humanity. Jacques Perconte presented Better Mont Blanc, a video installation combining AI-generated intermediate images with experimental video compression to transform mountain landscapes into flows of colour, form and data.

https://www.artphy.nl/2025/06/20/ai-ecologies-2/

Marée Métal

Datum:
Locatie: Le lieu unique Nantes
In samenwerking met: Le lieu Unique, Le voyage à Nantes

Marée métal transcends conventional image ecology, crafting an immersive experience where nature and industry merge into a continuous organic flow. Projected across six screens, this film unfolds over three hours, inviting viewers to navigate the space and find their own place within its ever-evolving landscape. Its immense success speaks to the welcoming nature of Perconte’s visuals, which, rather than imposing a singular perspective, open a sensitive and poetic realm of perception.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCGnhgCT-Uo

Silesilence at IABR / AFFR

Datum:
Locatie: LantarenVenster
In samenwerking met: Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam, International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam

Screening of Silesilence, created by Jacques Perconte with musician Julien Desprez, as part of the programme You Cannot Imagine Nothing during the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, in collaboration with Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam.

https://www.lantarenvenster.nl/programma/iabr-you-cannot-imagine-nothing-talk/

Europa Aour

Datum:
Locatie: European council

Comission for the french presidency of european union.

https://www.jacquesperconte.com/oe?256

After Nature, Westerwoldezon

Datum:
Locatie: Kunsthal ARTphy
In samenwerking met: Kunsthal ARTphy, Noorderlicht, Mondriaan Fund, Kunstraad Groningen, Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie

Group exhibition exploring the increasingly blurred boundaries between nature, technology and the environment. Jacques Perconte presented Westerwoldezon, an infinite generative video created from the landscape of Westerwolde, in which reverse-engineered video compression produces a continuously changing image.

https://www.artphy.nl/2021/07/15/tentoonstelling-after-nature/

Before the Collapse of Mont Blanc

Datum:
Locatie: TENT Online Cinema
In samenwerking met: TENT Rotterdam

Online presentation of Before the Collapse of Mont Blanc, a film confronting the Mont Blanc massif with the material transformations of digital video and the visible effects of a landscape undergoing rapid change.

https://www.tentrotterdam.nl/series/online-cinema/

The digital paintings of Jacques Perconte

Datum:
Locatie: online
In samenwerking met: arte tv

He alters pixels like a painter mixes pigments! Since the early 2000s, computer art pioneer Jacques Perconte has been using video compression to create moving, abstract landscapes. Although his "video paintings" are used by Jean-Luc Godard or Jeff Mills, the French artist sees himself above all as an alchemist capturing the journey of light through matter. Automùatic translation, English soon, Dutch i hop also :) available in german on arte-tv.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_Xhu9Vx5XM

La matière des images

Datum:
Locatie: Centre Pompidou

The exhibition "Matières d'images" brings together contemporary work by visual and video artists in a game of confrontations between silver photography and digital images that trace the signs of the future in the mutations of the landscape.

https://www.centrepompidou.fr/fr/horspistes2021/matieres-dimage/jacques-perconte

Or / Aour, Vienna at Full Moon #7

Datum:
Locatie: Full Moon
In samenwerking met: Full Moon

Screening of Or / Aour, Vienna, part of Jacques Perconte’s Radical Love Study series, during the seventh edition of Full Moon in Amsterdam.

http://www.fullmoon.art/

Rekveld / Perconte, Re:Voir DVD and Blu-ray Release

Datum:
Locatie: WORM
In samenwerking met: Re:Voir Editions, WORM, Joost Rekveld

Public presentation at WORM of new DVD and Blu-ray editions published by Re:Voir and devoted to the work of Jacques Perconte and Joost Rekveld.

https://worm.org/

Or / Or, Hawick at IFFR 2019

Datum:
Locatie: International Film Festival Rotterdam
In samenwerking met: International Film Festival Rotterdam

Presentation of Or / Or, Hawick, a nine-minute digital film by Jacques Perconte, at the 2019 International Film Festival Rotterdam. The work transforms a filmed landscape through colour, movement and the internal processes of digital compression.

https://iffr.com/nl/iffr/2019/films/or-or-hawick-may-18

Twenty-Nine Minutes at Sea

Datum:
Locatie: International Film Festival Rotterdam
In samenwerking met: International Film Festival Rotterdam

Screening of Twenty-Nine Minutes at Sea at the 47th International Film Festival Rotterdam. During a continuous encounter with the sea, the image is progressively transformed by digital compression into an intensely coloured and increasingly abstract landscape.

https://iffr.com/en/2018/films/twenty-nine-minutes-at-sea

Alchemical Visions

Datum:
Locatie: Cinema 2, EYE Film Museum
In samenwerking met: EYE Film Museum, FIBER Festiva

Screening programme presented by EYE Film Museum and FIBER Festival, exploring abstract, experimental and alchemical approaches to the moving image and including a work by Jacques Perconte.

https://www.eyefilm.nl/

Shifting Optics IV

Datum:
Locatie: Upstream Gallery
In samenwerking met: Upstream Gallery

Group exhibition examining the impact of digital culture on contemporary image-making. Jacques Perconte presented L’écume du phare, a generative film created from images of waves filmed near Fécamp and transformed through the manipulation of digital video compression.

https://www.upstreamgallery.nl/exhibitions/141/shifting-optics-iv

Independent Film Show

Datum:
Locatie: WORM Filmwerkplaats
In samenwerking met: WORM Filmwerkplaats. Curated by Karel Doing

Screening programme curated by filmmaker Karel Doing and presented at WORM Filmwerkplaats, featuring experimental moving-image works by Jacques Perconte and other international artists.

https://worm.org/

Après le feu at Somnio Film Festival

Datum:
Locatie: Somnio Film Festival
In samenwerking met: Somnio Film Festival, CJC

Screening of Après le feu by Jacques Perconte during Somnio Film Festival, as part of the programme celebrating the 40th anniversary of CJC.

http://www.somniofilmfestival.nl/

Après le feu at IFFR 2011

Datum:
Locatie: International Film Festival Rotterdam
In samenwerking met: International Film Festival Rotterdam, Film Travel, Dinamo

Screening of Après le feu by Jacques Perconte in the Film Travel / Dinamo programme of the 40th International Film Festival Rotterdam.

https://iffr.com/

15 Years of Internet Creation in France

Datum:
Locatie: IMPAKT Festival
In samenwerking met: IMPAKT Festival

Launch and presentation of 15 Years of Internet Creation in France during the 2009 IMPAKT Festival in Utrecht, presenting a historical perspective on French internet-based artistic creation.

https://impakt.nl/

Pauillac, Margaux at IFFR 2009

Datum:
Locatie: International Film Festival Rotterdam
In samenwerking met: International Film Festival Rotterdam

Screening of Pauillac, Margaux by Jacques Perconte at the 38th International Film Festival Rotterdam. Filmed while travelling through the Médoc vineyards, the work transforms the landscape through colour, movement and digital compression.

https://iffr.com/
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