Pauline Curnier Jardin — Films

In the film Fireflies (Lucciole) (2021), the members of Feel Good Cooperative perform like modern fireflies on the outskirts of Rome, in a place where real fueflies once lived but clients now seek out sex workers by flashing their headlights.

Feel Good Cooperative is an artistic collective founded by Pauline Curnier Jardin with the researcher and urban planner Serena Olcuire, the photographer and sex worker Alexandra Lopez and a group of Columbian transgender sex workers in Rome during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Initially, Curnier Jardin bought the sex workers’ drawings for the price of a ‘trick’, i.e. a sexual service. What began as an initiative to offer sex workers work and an income has grown into a long-term artistic collective. Curnier Jardin sees the sex workers as artists who possess a specific expertise of their own in their use of the body, light, make-up and costumes. Feel Good Cooperative is developing its own artistic practice encompassing performances and films, graphic works, sculptures and installations. Since it was founded, the cooperative’s work has been exhibited in Rome, Berlin, Genoa, Bonn, Cologne and New York.

“The subject of my work is not minorities, but the process of coming together, becoming a collective and developing shared expertise,” Curnier Jardin says.

Credits:
A film by Pauline Curnier Jardin and Feel Good Cooperative
Producer: Jacqui Davies, PRIMITIVE FILM
Starring: Alexandra Lopez / Barby de Martinez / Diana Veruzca Martinez / Gilda Star / Yuli
Director of Photography: Julien Hogert
Editor: Benni Atria
Sound Designer : Antonio Giannantonio
Casting: Alexandra Lopez
Line Producer: Mônica Hirano
1st Camera Assistant : Francesco Calisi
Sound Recordist: Azzura Stirpe
Assistant to Director & Driver: Colin Ledoux
Driver 2: Michele Nicolleti
Catering: Renan Mendes
Performers, Costume & Make-up by the Feel Good Cooperative
In collaboration with HKW Berlin and CRAC Occitanie
Courtesy of the artist, Feel Good Cooperative, ChertLüdde (Berlin) and Ellen de Bruijne Projects (Amsterdam)