During each Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the Council buildings (the Justus Lipsius and Europa buildings) are decorated according to an artistic project developed by the Member State holding the Presidency. The French artist Jacques Perconte, a pioneer of digital art in France, was commissioned to create a monumental work to be installed in the reception areas of the Justus Lipsius building.

A major element of the project L'Étoffe de l'Europe™, and in the same spirit, this work constitutes a living weaving of animated images, fruits of the artist's sentimental geography and filmed images of the European landscapes he brought back from his travels. As an ode to his inner landscapes, Jacques Perconte has conceived this new digital and sound work as a piece of digital goldsmithing and has named it Europa Aour.

Europa Aour

Single-channel video

4x5,5m 4K (3,5KLTBX: 1728x2376), stereo

r.o.e ruby 2.3 : 88x led panels + HELIOS LED Processing Platform*

In the Council of the European Union reception area, a large video is displayed vertically. It shows landscapes of Europe that are as humble as they are majestic, inviting us to slow down. On its sides are eight prints of birds crossing the sky.

All these prints of our environment are revealed by a delicate play of gold leaf, which, together with the digital nature of the images, disrupts the habits of our perception. Can the question of landscape be overcome to allow us to enter into a relationship with nature?

At each stage, from one country to another, I take the time to feel the nature that nourishes me. I let go of the pressures of our time. Europe is a magical landscape that I have inhabited for a long time. Most of the places I visit are places that life has taken me to. I have discovered their incredible and humble beauty. And, like distant friends you don't want to lose sight of, almost every year I make the trip to see them again, to understand them and to know them better. Even though the evils of the modern world constantly try to form images in my eyes, the relentless catastrophe is not enough to keep me away from my heart. It is certainly the only place where I can live happily and from which I can radiate a voice that will help transform the world. So from this sometimes battered nature, I take with me the immense beauty of its generous presence. Each of these landscapes, whatever the weather, becomes a ray of sunshine that brings out a deep warmth and reminds us of what is most alive in us.

"Throughout the history of art, landscape painting has assigned legibility to the forms of nature. Each of Jacques Perconte's films, on the other hand, engages us in a new perceptive adventure. This paradox of technique in the filmmaker's work is based on the following proposition: if the computerisation of audiovisual tools is not to impoverish our experience of life, it is essential that this experience once again become a critical craft of the forms of experience. This is how Perconte's films lead us into the sensitive learning of another relationship with the living, made up of minute perceptions, of a secret life of matter, revealed by a vitalism of technique. " Alice Leroy, Jacques Perconte, Paysage Contre Nature, L'art Et Les Formes De La Nature, Collège Des Bernardins.

founded by French Presidency of European Union

* this video has been made to be displayed on r.o.e ruby led panels 2.3 processed by a HELIOS LED Platform for the very specific high-end quality. It is 88 panels put together to produce the resolution of the video file.