Seven images unfold in cinematic progression, suturing together disparate styles and subjects. Alternating a snapshot aesthetic with straightforward still life, M/M confront us with their perverse humor in their take on the banality of everyday life. An old-model blue Renault is in the central frame of an archetypal banlieue* landscape, absurdly nestled next to home-entertainment satellite dish. Cut to the butcher, an anachronistic but persistent figure in France, even in the age of supermarkets. Is it his moustache or the dripping slab of meat in his hand that competes for the viewer's attention? A nondescript middle aged woman is caught dozing off on the TGV** as the French countryside zips by the window. To her left: a send-up of classic still life form using a birthday party relic. A bouquet of balloons in varying stages of deflation sits placidly in front of deliberately out-of-fashion wallpaper. A collection of corporal products ends this sequence. Arranged with sculptural precision, tooth-shaped bottles of Aquafresh toothpaste vie with Tessie Croc dog bones: a possible nod to the limitless range of inane products that so occupied Lefebvre's analysis.

Thumbing through these pages, an over-arching eclecticism begs a question: what unites these images? However cryptic or evasive, each image smacks of the planned obsolescence that drives consumer-culture while entirely couched in a marvelous deadpan sense of humor. M/M sense of play is manifest in their minute attention to sign-value. They are not the big signs of history, domination, or alienation; their commodity-speckled images are able to hone in upon the tiny signs, moments of rupture, changing speeds, lines of flight. Drawing out incongruities through strategies of juxtaposition, the fizzling balloon "sculpture" stands in static defiance to the ideologies of speed and progress implied by the TGV scene. Through a cultivation of this kind of visual contradiction, the codes of banality are prevented from taking on their usual bleakness. M/M's French landscape is far from a lesson in pure alienation.

Perhaps the opening image, Bébé avec Deleuze, holds a textual clue to unraveling this photographic rebus. The diaper-clad child while clutching the alien toy reaches up for a copy of Gilles Deleuze's Pourparlers (1990). Published in translation as Negotiations, this selection of interviews with Deleuze from 1972-1990 is united by a continuing theme each text poses the question, how does philosophy act as a means of resistance? Deleuze begins to answer this question on the very first page, " Why bring together the texts of conversations stretching over nearly twenty years? Negotiations sometimes last so long you don't know whether they're still part of the war or the beginning of peace [philosophy] has nothing to communicate, and can only negotiate. Since power isn't just an external thing, but permeates each of us, philosophy throws us into constant negotiations with, and a guerilla campaign against, ourselves. "*** It is very telling that our baby is not reaching out for Barthes' Mythologies or Baudrillard's Simulations, never mind anything by Lefebvre. If nothing else, the conscious reference to Deleuze confirms one thing: this is not a passive reportage on everyday life. M/M actively negotiate everyday life from within.

Alison M. Gingeras

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*Banlieue is the French word for suburb, though it slightly differs from the American class implications of the term. The rise of the banlieue also coincided with the period of post-war modernization, offering inexpensive housing to proletariat classes and new immigrants from the ex-colonies.
**The French TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) was one of the first high-speed train systems implemented in Europe beginning its first service in 1981. The combination of advanced technology and futurist aesthetic made it a symbol of triumph for French industrial design.
***Gilles Deleuze. Negotiations. (New York: Columbia University, 1995) p. vii.

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