At the Van Abbemuseum during From Dusk Till Dawn, Sarah Pierce exhibited her installation entitled The Question Would Be The Answer To The Question Are You Happy? (2009 – ongoing) that contains a host of interests which she repeatedly engages with in her ongoing project The Metropolitan Complex including archives, situations leading to debate and student activism. Anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch and sociologist Edgar Morin’s 1961 film Chronique d’un été was screened in relation to Pierce’s installation.

Last year, within the series of If I Can’t Dance Tonight, Sarah Pierce performed Any Questions: a performance from 1979 by the artist Kevin Atherton. Pierce has invited Atherthon to come to the Van Abbemuseum to engage in a dialogue about his work, specifically to speak with her about the relationships between conceptual practice, self-reflexivity, audience, and time. These topics are articulated in her own practice as well, often departing from debate situations, in a quest for self expression and the individual voice.

Chronicle of a Summer was filmed by anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch and sociologist Edgar Morin. It was a test of the possibilities of cinéma vérité by capturing snapshots of everyday life in Paris during the summer of 1960 and inviting their friends, patients and strangers to interact and take part in a sociological experiment. One of the characters is sent out on the street to ask passers-by: “Are you happy?” The question is posed in various forms to a mechanic, to Renault factory workers, couples, students etc. Their natural environments are recorded and debates ensue around tables indoors and outdoors including references to current affairs such as the war in Algeria. Rouch and Morin analyse the result, question its scientific value or success, highly aware of the systemic flaw in the exercise due to the unusual presence of the camera. In the final scene they invite their subjects / objects to view and critique the film themselves.