Personalien

With the Personalien video installation, Albert Serra proposes an immersive experience. Enter a dark room, lit only by two large screens (6 x 3.5 metres) facing each other, and give in to voyeurism. On the screens, a forest with 18th century characters cruising, like an animated, dark painting by Watteau. This Reina Sofía Museum commission is one of the artistic manifestations of his great interest in the struggle between desire and morality. He found the perfect iconography in the debauchery that spread during the twilight of the Ancien Régime. The first project fully focused on this world was the theatre production Liberté at the Volksbühne in Berlin, which evolved into Personalien and was then expanded and taken to the cinema (Liberté).