Harold Lechien

Installation

I Could Live Here Forever is a video installation that explores the contemporary mutations of media-related professions, particularly those at the frontier between the real and the artificial. The work focuses on the precariousness and instability of media workers in what is known as the “Gig Economy*,”* individuals whose activity consists of producing images of themselves or content for digital platforms, often in interaction with artificial intelligences or increasingly dematerialised environments.

The installation consists of three connected screens showing three films. The screens are embedded in souvenir-photograph frames enlarged to human size, so that digital images are juxtaposed with physical objects deeply associated with human memory and intimacy. The characters, both fictional and real, become metaphors for the way in which digital workers see their humanity reduced or reinterpreted by the technological devices around them.

Some sequences in this film were created or altered using artificial intelligence. They do not depict real events or documentary material.
The appearance of a recognizable face is based on a digital simulation using deepfake technology. Any resemblance to real individuals is intentionally fictional and part of an artistic approach.

Harold Lechien

Harold Lechien (1995) is a Belgian artist who lives and works in Brussels. Through modular installations combining sculpture, video, images and manufactured objects, his work questions contemporary forms of staging and the visual narratives that shape our perception of reality. By sampling, transforming and recomposing signs from industry, he explores commodity fetishism and the mechanisms by which products, advertising discourse and communication technologies capture our emotions and convert them into commodities. His works articulate a visual and narrative style that draws as much on the codes of design and commercial scenography as on those of cinema and advertising. Using fiction as a tool for critical analysis, he stages environments in which signs, objects and bodies re-enact the logic of consumption and the spectacle. Since 2018, his work has been shown in several institutions and exhibitions in Belgium and abroad, including ISELP (Brussels), Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles (Paris), DMW Gallery (Antwerp) and the TRANSMEDIALE festival (Berlin).

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