Johan Grimonprez

Johan Grimonprez’s work dances on the borders of theory and practice, between art and cinema, beyond the dualisms of documentary and fiction, other and self, mind and brain to weave new pathways and stories, emphasizing a multiplicity of realities. Informed by an archeology of present-day media, his work depicts intimate stories that brush up against the bigger picture of globalization. It questions our collective imagination and the contemporary sublime, one framed by a fear industry that has infected political and social dialogue.

Grimonprez’s artistic and curatorial projects have been exhibited at museums worldwide, including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; and MoMA, New York. His works are in the collections of Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; Tate Modern, London; and ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. His feature films include »dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y« (1997, in collaboration with novelist Don DeLillo, selected by the Guardian as one of the “30 great works in the history of video art”), »Double Take« (2009, in collaboration with writer Tom McCarthy) and »Shadow World« (2016, in combination with journalist Andrew Feinstein). Traveling the main festival circuit from the Berlinale, Tribeca to Sundance, they garnered several Best Director awards, the 2005 ZKM International Media Award, a Spirit Award and the 2009 Black Pearl Award at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, and were also acquired by NBC Universal, ARTE, and BBC/FILM 4.

He published several books, including » Inflight« (2000), »Looking for Alfred« (2007) and a reader titled »It’s a Poor Sort of Memory that Only Works Backwards« (2011) with contributions by Jodi Dean, Thomas Elsaesser, Tom McCarthy, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Slavoj Žižek.

He lectured widely, among others at the University de Saint-Denis (Paris 8), Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics; Tate Modern; MoMA (New York); Columbia University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); the Parliament of Bodies of documenta 14, and he participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.

His film project (with investigative journalist Andrew Feinstein), »Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade«, was awarded a production grant from the Sundance Institute, premiered at the 2016 Tribeca IFF (New York). It went on to win the Best Documentary Feature Award at the 2016 Edinburgh International Film Festival, and premiered its US broadcast on Independent Lens on PBS in 2017.

Grimonprez’s latest feature »Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat« is Oscar® nominated for Best Documentary Feature Film and has premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Cinematic Innovation Award and further garnered the Persistence of Vision Award at SFFilm and the Audience Award at Thessaloniki Film Festival.