In Ang Lee's film The Ice Storm (1997), Mikey Carver gives a presentation to his class on smell: "Because of molecules we are connected to the outside world from our bodies. Like when you smell things, because when you smell a smell it’s not really a smell, it’s a part of the object that has come off of it, molecules. So when you smell something bad, it’s like in a way you’re eating it. This is why you should not really smell things, in the same way that you don’t eat everything in the world around you because as a smell, it gets inside of you. So the next time you go into the bathroom after someone else has been there, remember what kinds of molecules you are in fact eating."

In Laure Prouvost’s work, smells, sounds and glances connect us directly to the the general ripeness. From the drawings to the videos, the tenor is one of forced intimacy. It evokes the body odour of a fellow commuter, both repellent and strangely eloquent: a smell “is not really a smell,” but an unspoken contract. And its voices attest to this, as they act on the overwhelming evidence of their senses and demand, with stalkerish confidence, that we reciprocate: “You are the only one…”

Prouvost draws on the strange, daily, deictic assault of contemporary language in the same way, savouring the unasked-for intimacy of a faux-personal spam message or a threatening chain letter. These ridiculous demands nonetheless inflict tiny fractures on our sense of separateness and self-containment. Their flipside is the orphaned photo which spirals off into conjecture and the further reaches of empathy, pathological projection.

Mike Sperlinger, 2008

Laure Prouvost completed her BA at Central Saint Martins. Her works are distributed by LUX. Her work is in The National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in the UK, and she is director of the website tank.tv.

Prouvost has been selected for East International 2009.