Le polygraphe

Video installation with sound.

A 68-year old woman submits to a polygraph test. For this video, the (non-professional) actress and her examiner, John Galianos (he, a professional polygrapher) enter the exercise naturally. Questions are asked three times in a different order each time, as per standard procedure. Only the control questions are preserved, the banal questions serving to establish a benchmark for the suspect’s physical reactions and providing a barometer for picking out the lies. In order to do this, the suspect is asked to lie to the examiner. A dance as absurd as it is oppressive, the desire to tell the truth seems as irrepressible as that to please authority.