Lucie Planty’s artistic practice manifests as collections and assemblages of images that engage with History, examining how it presents itself to us and the potential for the disappearance or degradation of its preservation forms. Her work invites contemplation of memory's various dimensions, the erosion of legend and source, the evolution of digital archives, and the troubling implications of a diminishing capacity for preservation in the face of changes. These collections are curated as interactive image installations that encourage public engagement, allowing viewers to touch, modify, and rearrange them, akin to consultation spaces. Consequently, these installations are inherently modular; their compositions remain open to audience interpretation, continuously transforming alongside their preservation, which depends on the care afforded to the manipulable objects. This exploration of our shared history also interrogates its collective nature: while the content of the work addresses our heritage, its arrangement fosters dialogue and interaction, rendering these installations dynamic and alive. [more ⇲]

Last Century is an installation of 100 booklets pinned to the wall, composed of black-and-white images extracted from the pages of the Italian newspaper "La Stampa" between 1900 and 2000. The archives of this newspaper have been digitized and published online, but priority was given to the text, resulting in the degradation of many photographs during scanning; numerous images have become unreadable. These damaged photographs were painstakingly retrieved using a data hoarding technique, with the images reproduced to scale and organized chronologically, one booklet per year. The content of these photographs has become impossible to identify and no longer carries historical information. They now display this paradox: they have been rendered unreadable by the very medium intended to make them visible.

Scrying frames is both the title of the exhibition held at INSTINC Singapore and a video displayed on that occasion. The film Scrying frames was created from Super 8 film reels. Each of its 20,000 frames was transformed through several stages using traditional digital tools, drawing, and artificial intelligence, and then reconstituted into films once again. It retains all the signs of a reel (shifts, dust, appearances of frame edges, etc.), while possessing a drawn and evanescent materiality. The term ‘scrying’ refers to an ancient divinatory practice of revealing images, particularly from the past, on reflective surfaces—poetically connected to cinema through the various works in the exhibition. These images present such visions: children swimming in a river, lovers resting in a park, and a stroll along the beach—coming to us from an unknown past that we must attempt to decipher, yet, in their banality, they intertwine with our present time..

Histories pictures is a collection of hundreds of press photographs accumulated over the years from newspapers. These images have been subjectively chosen for their strangeness, composition, and poetry, based on their necessity to convey something about international news within the limited space of a newspaper. This collection is arranged in archive furniture, consisting of prints on felt that can be hung on the wall in variations designed by the visitors. Consultation is left open, allowing individuals to choose the rhythm and layout, creating a narrative combination that renews with each arrangement. Each person projects their imagination and interpretation, telling themselves a story activated by these silent images without captions.

This installation consists of several dozen booklets arranged in a line on a desk, available for public consultation. The booklets are originals from magazines from the 1960s and 70s dedicated to documenting various types of knowledge. Completely blackened, they appear as if burned or charred, sometimes revealing the printed content in thick ink that was once readable in the light. Only a few images remain uncovered; they appear randomly throughout the pages, and it is up to the visitors to find them. These images present signs. These signs originate from various sources (geological, produced by living beings, human languages, etc.), which, stripped of context and captions, regain their original mystery that precedes their deciphering (unless one possesses that knowledge from memory or it is transmitted orally). These forms, which signify the existence or trace of something, emerge throughout this obscure library, like phenomena in the night of knowledge.

In the darkness, amidst a strong smell of sulfur, an installation is revealed, featuring several metal supports topped with a platform on which about thirty black matches are arranged. On these matches lies a printed image from old newspapers, hinting at a snow scene sparkling in the night. To make the image visible, one must sacrifice a match, and thus a part of the image; it can be glimpsed during the match's combustion. These images, which no one ever looks at, are impossible to retrieve from the immeasurable pile of past news archives, stripped of all captions here, reappearing for a brief moment before almost immediately slipping back into oblivion.

Chronicle of Humanity is a digital replica of the book of the same name published by Hachette in 1986. The entire book has been digitized and presented identically on a vast interactive page that can be accessed on a large touchscreen table. The content has been erased, except for the photographs: what remains is a succession of thousands of images without captions that recount the human saga in a silence that speaks to its fragility. These images also reflect an era, a way of depicting history, and the country from which the selection originated; they serve as models of representation. Often, visitors gather around this large luminous display, much like sitting around a fire where stories are shared. The images scroll by; most evoke nothing—faces without names, wars without dates—and sometimes one stands out; it’s pointed at, “I know that image”—and a story begins.

Specimen is an installation of learning manuals reproduced precisely (including papers, bindings, formats, and layout). Once these facsimiles are scanned, the content is erased, except for the photographs. By transforming these manuals into iconographic catalogs of unknown disciplines, what remains are silent picture books that embody the essence of knowledge, techniques, and crafts. They are arranged in a documentation setup and are available for public consultation. This initial participatory installation lays the groundwork for several reflections that will evolve into various forms, notably Chronicle of Humanity a few years later.

The video Syria travel presents the authentic account of a couple's family trip in December 2002 during Christmas. The narrative from this excursion is punctuated by gaps that the two protagonists attempt to fill in from their respective memories. The video features details of blurred images that are impossible to identify, with a wavering focus. At rare moments, a clear visual emerges when a memory is recalled with certainty. Although the Syrian conflict is never explicitly mentioned, it is continually implied. The narrator, who is pregnant, speaks of the pain of contractions during a grueling journey through the desert and her fear of losing her child, who has shown no signs of life since the beginning of the trip. This amnesiac narrative oscillates between a tourist visit to a ruined world heritage site, the tragedy of a country ravaged by war, and the personal story of survival and birth amidst ancient ruins.

Bread archives is an installation of edible images printed on edible paper. These images are sourced from family photo albums that were discarded and rescued from the street. Once re-photographed and printed on the edible paper, the images are permanently destroyed, as originally intended by their owners. By consuming them, visitors experience these intimate photographs one last time, ingesting memories that have been abandoned and are now forever lost, becoming the last bearers of this erased memory. This installation proposes a strange and somewhat absurd gesture: to ingest an image—to be iconophagous—and each person reacts strongly and differently to this concept.

stars & dusts is a book comprising a selection of early 20th-century photographs. This iconography serves as a collection in which the sun, the moon, or dust specks (resembling spots in the sky) appear in the backgrounds of historic sites that are empty, in ruins, and abandoned. The conditions of preservation have sometimes left white, round marks. This selection elevates these specks and stars to the same level, representing two units of measurement for the infinitely large and the infinitely small—ultimately similar in appearance.

The work Singular collection consists of restoring a material reality, in the form of copies, to looted paintings that disappeared during World War II—lost and never found—by recreating them in color and their original format based on black-and-white photographic archives. These three copies represent three portraits: a religious figure, a minor historical actor, and an unknown individual. The selected paintings span different eras and styles, created by both famous and obscure artists. The reconstruction process was developed in collaboration with a copyist, Philippe Van der Linden, to imagine the colors of these lost paintings, invent coherent details, envision the formats, and capture the artist's intent in pixels. This long research effort aims to create inaccurate doubles of these works. They resist their disappearance through these fakes and survive as ghosts.

Johann Michael Bretschneider is a minor and obscure painter from the late 17th century whose work consists of a few rare paintings depicting galleries of paintings. Within these figures of academic style lies a barely formulated meta-work. His painted galleries are adorned solely with his own paintings, which were never actually created. He has never entered the history of painting (no publications). Bretschneider, private collection is a protean work that aims to conjure from nowhere a suddenly significant artist with 500 paintings from a mysterious fictitious private collection (which I have actually photographed in several locations across Europe, thereby becoming the sole holder of the iconographic fund of this meta-work) through texts, conferences, and online publications, while cleverly conducting a poetic and historical analysis. His work and place in art are re-evaluated through simple effects of cropping and editing—Isn't that how history is always constructed?—and this written work sheds light on a true-false history of painting.

Tempo de l’Art is a radio program that aims to invite young figures in contemporary art for a monthly discussion centered around current events. The guests include artists, curators, writers, and directors of exhibition spaces. This platform is intended to provide a high-quality listening experience for young artists, promote their exhibitions, and offer a moment for reflection on the challenges of contemporary creation. The show is broadcast on Fréquence Protestante, a secular and cultural radio station, as well as on all podcast platforms. It is recorded in the studio under live conditions and is not edited

This artist-run space has hosted approximately thirty exhibitions and several hundred artists, curators, and art practitioners since its inception. As a research and production platform, it aims to disseminate and promote contemporary creation based on the principle of knowledge and resource sharing. From the beginning, in.plano has embraced its uniqueness, striving to create both a workshop and a genuine exhibition space. Notably, in.plano was invited to exhibit at the Salon de Montrouge in 2022 and at The Others Art Fair in Turin in 2018. The collective received support from the Fondation de France in 2023-24 for the production of several exhibitions with guest curators (Léa Djurado, Alexandra Goullier Lhomme, Adrien Elie, Noelia Portela) held at 6B, Doc, and Au Lieu. It also received a DRAC Île-De-France Grant in 2020 and was awarded the François de Hatvany Prize from the Fondation de France in 2018. The original exhibition space was destroyed illegally and irreversibly in 2022. (Libération article ⇲)

The several courses primarily involve exploring a vast collection of documents (films, photos, texts, books, etc.) organized into different research topics on images and housed on a dedicated digital platform. Each year, this database is enriched with new topics, additional references, and documents related to current events. Patiently and meticulously compiled, this extensive collection serves as a foundation for the research behind the works presented here, with its branches and future additions hinting at what is to come.

This year of the Covid-19 pandemic, 2020, has been a year of distancing, whether social, psychological, or physical. Date(s) aims to absorb this distance. It is a posted exhibition that seeks to bring the artwork back into the palm of the hand and shifts its experience into the intimacy of the home. Date(s) proposes a series of eleven encounters between artworks and their subscribers. Eleven artworks that will gradually add to and meet one another throughout the year 2021, forming a unique and variable exhibition that rejects the sole privilege of the sense of sight. Date(s) is an off-frame proposal. The artwork, and then the exhibition, are stripped of all their habits and present themselves naked, without any preconceptions, in unfamiliar
interiors. [...]" curatorial text, continue ⇲