Ceci est mon coeur emphasizes self-acceptance and showcases the beauty of human fragility. It is an extraordinary love story, the tale of a child’s reconciliation with his body. A sensory and narrative creation that highlights the distorted representation we have of our own bodies.

Conceived as a collective site-specific work, Ceci est mon coeur is an installation designed for cultural and artistic centers and spaces. It is an immersive tale in which members of the public, wrapped in a connected garment embellished with luminous embroidery, are carried away in a poetic experience, both oral and visual. Ceci est mon coeur offers a sensory odyssey in which the audience sees the connected garment light up in sync with the text of the story. A ballet of lights takes shape under the impulse of the story, a story conceived as a dialogue between the narrator and his own body. It is an intimate work that integrates visual projections, a soundscape and the choreography of light that moves through people’s bodies. Everything seems to breathe and react to the story. At the end of the 30-minute experience is an off-boarding stage in which visitors encounter a series of 12 photographic portraits of young adults who, through the photographer’s lens, dramatize the story they construct with their own bodies.

Ceci est mon coeur is unique: For the first time, the public is invited to take part in a collective experience centered around a connected garment — a garment of light immersing the audience in a singular visual universe.

Several silk fabric veils divide a room of approximately 100 square meters, allowing spectators to move around the space. Four video projectors are installed around the room, projecting onto it a visual universe of generative art and live-action video. Wearing a connected garment made up of addressable LEDs, spectators wander around the room. The veils are translucent, allowing the projections to pass through. Viewers can observe the work from different perspectives.

Visitors wear noise-canceling HD headphones. They listen to the narrator’s voice as he tells the story of his reconciliation with his body. The garment is choreographed to the rhythm of the text and the music. What counts is not the interaction between participants but the idea of experiencing a shared moment together. The concept of Ceci est mon coeur is based on this desire to let the body speak for itself in order to highlight a magnificent and necessary reconciliation — a reconciliation that involves looking at and listening to others, for it is through them that we heal. The emphasis is not on how the other looks at you, but rather on the idea of feeling the other’s presence around you.

Stéphane Hueber-Blies and Nicolas Blies — the Blies brothers — are filmmakers and digital artists who create their work together. Natives of Strasbourg in the historical region of Alsace in France, they live and work in Luxembourg.

In 2015, they conceptualized the transmedia music documentary Soundhunters in co-production with ARTE, the European culture channel. Soundhunters was imagined to transform the world into an infinite musical instrument. It  was released in 2015 in collaboration with a number of international artists, including Jean Michel Jarre, Simonne Jones and Blixa Bargeld. In 2016, the project was placed under the patronage of UNESCO and the Blies brothers were invited to present it at Lincoln Center during the New York Film Festival.

In 2019, they wrote and directed their first feature-length documentary Zero Impunity, about the impunity of sexual violence in war zones. Hybridizing animation and live action, the film is considered one of the precursors in this field. The Blies brothers were invited by the Annecy International Animation Film Festival to take part in the festival’s traditional masterclass, where they discussed the issue of sexual violence in animation. In 2021, the film was nominated for the Trophées Francophones du Cinéma in the “Best Documentary” category.

Continuing their research into the hybridization of forms, the Blies brothers went on to develop the digital art installation Ceci est mon coeur while also writing their first animated feature, Les deux frères.