Precarious Life
Date:
2026
Materials:
Double screen projection
Dimensions:
High definition video projection format 16:9. Duration 37'10''
Exhibition history:
2026 MAMbo and University of Bologna-DAMSlab, Bologna, Italy
Courtesy:
Lucy + Jorge Orta. Filmed and edited by David Bickerstaff and photography by Paul Bevan. Co-produced by Studio Orta and Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna
The film Precarious Life emerges in response to recent geopolitical crises, while remaining rooted in historical events that have shaped the artists’ trajectory: Jorge Orta’s experience of Argentina’s military dictatorship in the 1970s; Lucy and Jorge’s meeting at the outset of the Gulf War in 1991; the genocide in Rwanda; the Balkan wars; the invasion of Fallujah in 2004; and, more recently, the war in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East.
Structured in two parts, the film unfolds through a sequence of performance-actions developed collectively and filmed at Studio Orta Les Moulins, with students, artists, musicians, filmmakers, and friends. The first part evidences conflict and its consequences; the second turns toward gestures of repair, collective agency, and the possibility of a more compassionate world. Through the actions — carrying wounded bodies, braiding grass, replanting uprooted olive trees — vulnerability becomes visible as collective experience.
The film opens and closes with the artists’ Antarctica Flag — a symbol of hope fluttering in a kaleidoscope of colours. The edges of identity blur into a shared interdependent horizon: a supranational emblem of an enlarged community.