La Vie Héroïque de B.S. - Un opéra en 3 actes (2013-2015)
HD video 1080p with sound, 45’08’’ © Hoël Duret / ADAGP, Paris 2015

La Vie Héroïque de B.S. - Un opéra en trois actes (2013-2015) is a narrative and critical drama that follows the adventures of its main character, a stubborn industrial designer named B.S.. Born during the Functionalist movement of the twentieth century, he tries to bring a new outlook on the subject but praises the American Way of Life.

In the first act he tries to achieve an effective synthesis of 20th century’s design. He presents this pathetic collage build like a Design Land when he receives a call. A professional consortium asks him to redraw and improve chicken egg’s to optimize their packaging and transportation. But in the second act, after hours of work, he finds himself having to go against Nature’s laws by trying to perfect a perfect form. His contradictions therefore slowly leads him to madness in his impossible task. In the last act, he definitively loose his Modern certainties and embarks on a journey to Greece to understand the creation of the very first manufactured form : the Doric column. He hopes that in those desertic landscapes a transcendental and universal truth on creation will appear to him.

The first act mimics post-war Design’s commercials that praises the genius of an era. The second act looks like a popular science TV show and the third and final act ends the Opera like an experimental psychedelic film.

Hoël Duret used his own exhibitions as film sets for this project. He staged strange scenographies which assumes the failure of his character's modernist thoughts. All the productions out of this ambitious project have an ambiguous status, in between furnitures, craft, film sets, props and artworks. Even the Opera's genre becomes a playing field for Hoël Duret who questions and transforms it through this work.