Among Sleeping Giants, Myths, and Memory
Photographer, filmmaker, musician, and writer, Clément Beauvais (Paris, 1981) moves between disciplines with a quiet, uncanny ease. His universe is woven from dreamlike images, sounds that echo ancient myths, and words that attempt to re-enchant the modern world.
Whether through a cinematic installation or an experimental music project, his work hovers between reality and fiction, the human and the post-human, what once was and what may have been. In Sleeping Giants, his most recent installation, humanity has vanished—its remnants resting in the form of colossal sculptures.
We spoke with him about the nature of the sacred, the civilizations that came before us, and the role of imagination in an era where truth is constantly splintering.
How do you decide which medium to use for each idea?
Each medium follows—but also creates—its own rhythm, territory, and relationship with time and space. A single idea resonates differently depending on the form it takes. Sometimes the boundaries between mediums become fluid. I like exploring the connection and the tension between them, and how this affects our perception of time and space.
In Sleeping Giants you imagine a world without humans, inhabited only by dormant giants. How did this idea begin?
These giants symbolize the creative impulse of the first civilizations, who populated the world with spirits and deities. In this depopulated world, they act as guardians of a story with no narrator. The ancient spirits of nature lie in eternal sleep, protecting the last echoes of our existence.
The installation has an almost mystical atmosphere—a silence that feels like it speaks.
Exactly. Through these sleeping giants, I wanted viewers to ask: What do these figures dream about as they rest under an indifferent sky? Are they ruins of civilizations, or spirits waiting to awaken again?
The film explores the threshold between disappearance and persistence, reality and virtuality, showing how human history might blend back into its own origins.
The piece is also technically immersive.
It’s a 16-minute cinematic installation, captured digitally and projected in 4K DCI (4096 × 1716) with Dolby Atmossound. More than a film, it’s a meditative experience.
Your first exhibition, The Man from Utah, debuted in Paris in 2021. What drew you to that desert landscape?
Hanksville was founded by settlers in 1882 and remains a small desert town. Just beyond it sits the Mars Desert Research Station, a simulated Martian environment where researchers live in isolation to prepare for life on Mars.
The same spirit that pushed settlers west now drives researchers toward space. One can imagine that someday Mars will have places like Hanksville—named after those who discovered, endured, and settled, carrying the spirit of exploration forward.
Your work often dialogues with ancient myths. What draws you to them?
I wanted to explore our relationship with nature through the lens of ancient civilizations, when nature was perceived as sacred and inhabited by spirits. Across Pre-Columbian cultures, Native American traditions, Greece, and Mesopotamia, nature was divine and animals served as emissaries.
Today that perception has vanished; nature has become a reflection of political struggle. But myths and museum artifacts remind us that the world was once enchanted.
My artistic practice sits at the border between documentary and fiction, searching for the moment where reality fractures and becomes multiple possible narratives.
You’ve worked with brands like Dior, Givenchy, Kenzo, and BMW. How do you maintain your voice in commercial work?
I’ve been lucky to work with brands that gave me immense creative control. I’m interested in using that space to explore, not just communicate. When the industry trusts the artist, poetic outcomes can arise even within commercial contexts.
You talk often about the notion of truth today. How do you define it?
There is now a difference between reality and truth—something that wasn’t always the case. Descartes sought a universal, stable truth to define reality, but we now understand truth as fragmented, multiple, and culturally mediated.
Documentary and fiction aren’t opposites; they are two modes of revealing different dimensions of the world. Each contains its truths and its lies. The danger emerges when one narrative tries to dominate the others, as with propaganda.
Your images evoke nostalgia but also possible worlds.
It’s less about nostalgia and more about imagining alternative realities. A photograph never shows a single truth—the reality within an image shifts depending on who observes it. Each viewer brings their own perception, memory, and imagination.
When a moment is captured, it’s pulled from the flow of time, becoming a starting point for countless possible narratives.
Beyond your visual work, you’re part of the experimental duo Reptile Reptiles. How did that collaboration begin?
I began composing music for my films—always intuitively. When I met Alexandre Bazin, we connected instantly and started working on an album. His experience at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales opened a new field of sonic experimentation.
Our first album is narrative: it tells the story of a soul returning to the land of souls in eight sequences, each track like a chapter, accompanied by an 18-page book of photographs and poems read by Gary Farmer.
Gary Farmer—known for his iconic role in Jarmusch’s Dead Man—is part of the project. What does his presence mean to you?
The album is also an homage to that film and to the character Gary embodied. His voice brings a deep spiritual dimension, a connection to the invisible worlds I’m always trying to evoke.
Your images seem to suspend time. What draws you to the everyday moment?
For me, the mundane is a threshold. Everyday objects or moments can feel strange in their simplicity, pointing to something beyond themselves. I’m interested in how an image can transcend its frame, suggesting a world outside the screen.
That tension—between presence and absence, attraction and escape—is where poetry resides.
Which artists or filmmakers have influenced your work most?
Many have shaped me—books, paintings, films—but directors such as David Lynch, Béla Tarr, and Jim Jarmusch had a major impact. Their slowness, mystery, and depth greatly influenced how I see reality.
Your projects feel designed to be lived rather than watched. How do you conceive the viewer’s experience?
Sleeping Giants is an immersive installation where sound and image are equally important. Rather than a short film, it’s an experience inviting viewers to reflect on our place in nature and our history.
I aim to create a space of resonance rather than narrative. The use of Dolby Atmos and meditative imagery dissolves the boundary between cinema, memory, and myth.
What do you hope audiences take away from the experience?
I hope viewers reflect on humanity’s relationship with nature, memory, and the impermanence of civilization.
In this posthuman world, nature becomes the final guardian of memory. The sleeping giants protect the last traces of humanity.
I am currently developing a new installation combining sound, image, and scent.
Clément Beauvais moves through territories that most only dare to brush against: myth, memory, and silence.
His work does not seek answers, but resonance. Within it, time pauses and the image becomes spirit. In a world obsessed with immediacy, Beauvais reminds us that contemplation—like the sleeping giants—can also be a form of resistance.
Interview by: Gabriela Gorab
