Making with Trouble: Stéphanie Lagarde

“Isolated from their communities, means of subsistence, and support structures, both nuclear families and managed forest plots reveal themselves to be deadly structures.” Stéphanie Lagarde on Extra Life (And Decay) Historically embedded, uncannily anachronistic, profoundly material. Paris-based Stéphanie Lagarde’s films traverse time and place to expose systems of control that attempt to delimit life’s possibilities. Déploiements, made in response to France’s anti-terrorist defence and surveillance measures following the 2015 Île-de-France attacks, is a prescient examination of the military industrial complex prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rocky Tales of Occupation explores the corridors of Jezuietenberg—a subterranean museum carved out of limestone by Jesuit missionaries—to redress historical liberties taken by its creators. Deeper still, Minimal Sway While Starting My Way Up follows the existential musings of a sentient elevator, serving as the humble connector between mega-tower and mineral mine. Finally, Extra Life (and Decay) reestablishes proximity between subject and filmmaker, developing a formation of collective resistance that, according to Lagarde, mobilizes ​“a language of anger, the most precise political language I can own.” Introduced by curator Casey Wei and, by video, Stéphanie Lagarde. Déploiements Netherlands 2018 Stéphanie Lagarde 16 min. DCP In French with English subtitles Rocky Tales of Occupation Netherlands 2019 Stéphanie Lagarde 15 min. DCP In English Minimal Sway While Starting My Way Up Netherlands 2021 Stéphanie Lagarde 16 min. DCP In English Extra Life (and Decay) France/​Netherlands 2025 Stéphanie Lagarde 22 min. DCP In French with English subtitles