How to excel at everything
by Marion Balac
En Compétition 2024
Official synopsis
In 'How to Excel at Everything', two Pokemon-like friends embark on a journey together to master every skill possible through online tutorials.
Freely adapted from Flaubert's unfinished book 'Bouvard et Pécuchet' (published posthumously in 1881), 'How to Excel at Everything' explores the dynamics operating in our current era of online self-study and YouTube tutorials. Guided by algorithmic recommendations, B and P try to learn everything without any pedagogical compass, falling into a new rabbit hole everyday. Exploring the thin interstice between online DIY culture and the dismantling of institutional pedagogical structures, 'How to Excel at Everything' translates the gamification of our lives and the rise of self-help culture into a learning odyssey.
Biography and Filmography
Marion Balac (b. 1984) is a visual artist with degrees from ENSBA Lyon and Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne. Observing and using the resources offered by the internet, she lingers on these dynamic playgrounds to bring out their incongruities, divert their uses towards poetic ends or social experiments and elaborate new fictions, in or out of the screen. Her work has been shown at Confort Moderne (Poitiers), Enclave Projects (London), Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac (Pantin) for Jeune Création, Centre d'art contemporain Fabra i Coats (Barcelona), Galerie Annka Kultys (London), Photo Elysée (Lausanne), Paradise Works (Manchester), l'Abbaye (Annecy-le-Vieux), Espace des Blancs-Manteaux (Paris), Galerie Manqué (New York), Galerie Neuf (Nancy), LOOP (Barcelona), Hectoliter (Brussels), Musée Saint-Raymond (Toulouse)... and in production residencies such as Espositivo and Casa de Velázquez in Madrid, Salón Bellefour in Buenos Aires and Hangar in Barcelona. She was a research resident at the Laboratoire Modulaire at ésam Caen-Cherbourg in 2020 and at the ESACM Research Cooperative from 2019 to 2023. She has been teaching at Beaux Arts de Marseille since 2021.
2024 : How to excel at everything - Director
by Marion Balac
Marion Balac (b. 1984) is a visual artist with degrees from ENSBA Lyon and Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne. Observing and using the resources offered by the internet, she lingers on these dynamic playgrounds to bring out their incongruities, divert their uses towards poetic ends or social experiments and elaborate new fictions, in or out of the screen. Her work has been shown at Confort Moderne (Poitiers), Enclave Projects (London), Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac (Pantin) for Jeune Création, Centre d'art contemporain Fabra i Coats (Barcelona), Galerie Annka Kultys (London), Photo Elysée (Lausanne), Paradise Works (Manchester), l'Abbaye (Annecy-le-Vieux), Espace des Blancs-Manteaux (Paris), Galerie Manqué (New York), Galerie Neuf (Nancy), LOOP (Barcelona), Hectoliter (Brussels), Musée Saint-Raymond (Toulouse)... and in production residencies such as Espositivo and Casa de Velázquez in Madrid, Salón Bellefour in Buenos Aires and Hangar in Barcelona. She was a research resident at the Laboratoire Modulaire at ésam Caen-Cherbourg in 2020 and at the ESACM Research Cooperative from 2019 to 2023. She has been teaching at Beaux Arts de Marseille since 2021.
2024 : How to excel at everything - Director