In the age of social networking and instant communication, where we might think that friendships and love relationships are more accessible than ever, many people suffer from a profound sense of loneliness.
Girlfriend Experience is an immersive video installation about emotional distress in our hyper-connected society.
Ugo Arsac focuses on the Girlfriend Experience (GFE), in which sex workers offer more than just sex, but also tenderness and intimacy.
In a film shot using volumetric capture, Ugo Arsac talks to sex workers and their clients about the practice. A trend exacerbated by the use of social networks, which leads people to look for more than just sex: affection, tenderness and, above all, authenticity.
Girlfriend Experience takes the form of an immersive multi-screen installation, using smarphones as the medium for the audiovisual creation. By dialling a number on their own smarphone, visitors have access to the audio content of the documentary, the testimonies of the protagonists bringing the images of the film to life.
The smartphone, which at first acts as the link between the customer and sex workers via sex-on-demande applications, becomes here the point of entry between the audience and the work, shaking up our position as spectators and questionning our social and intimate relationships in an ultra-connected age.
