Patterns of Life

“Patterns of life” is a short movie by French artist Julien Prévieux dealing with the history of the technological capture of human movements. Starting with the use of chronophotography to model abnormal gait in the late 19th century, the film offers a choreographic reenactment of a long series of experiments that have been designed to extract objectified patterns of activities from the motions of living bodies, whether with the view to discipline, to control, or to target them.

This film is freely adapted from the paper “Patterns of Life: A Very Short History of Schematic Bodies” by philosopher Grégoire Chamayou, which stems from a discussion with geographer Derek Gregory at the UCHRI/WISER workshop “Knowing secrets, secret knowledge” held at UCHRI on the UC Irvine campus in November 2014.