INTERVIEW

WITH EXO HUMAN – (JULY 2019)

Hello Exo Human, Thank you for granting this interview where I hope we can get to understand you and your work in greater depth.

You have been known in France for decades for your artistic performances of urban positioning, and myriad biting graffiti proverbs holding a magnification mirror up to humanity. Fewer people know of your prize-winning poetry and books, though. Your philosophical stance and artistic identity stem from the circumstances of your birth, hardship of your childhood wrought with illness which you surmounted with great difficulty culminating in a sort of mid-life “baptism” in the depths of Greenland’s icy waters with a spectacular jump from a helicopter to obtain the world record for thermal shock, and where, perhaps more importantly, you were reborn as Exo Human.

The variety and number of activities in your background are astounding. Perhaps a starting point into you and your work could be the origin of your name Exo Human (Hors Humain in French) which is on your passport and identity card, and how this second “christening” relates to your world-record in Greenland.

A series of childhood traumas led me to a sort of boycott of humanity’s structures, it’s tough, rigid nature. The pain, pressure and alienation was such that I had to flee, flee, flee as far as possible, and that was to leave humanity behind. But, don’t get me wrong, I am not against humanity—that would mean I had passionate involvement with it. I merely emancipated myself from humanity. You see, humanity had made one mistake with me. It put electro-shocks into my brain when I was seven years old. At first, I was totally blown away, humiliated by the series of abusive “treatments”. My brain actually hurt. Later, I realized that I had transformed this aggression into a rare strength. Other of my peers weren’t so lucky, succumbing to suicide faced with the mortal charge of the electricity. I got through it…