Virginia Seaside is understood for uplifting an unforgettable performance or two. Similarly, actual occasions have served as fodder for some of the installations of the Canadian duo Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller Their 2007 project The Killing Machine, which included an electric dental chair and two robotic arms that attacked an invisible prisoner, was partly inspired by the accounts of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad (and in part by a Franz Kafka brief story).

The curators for the Paris exhibition are Cécile Debray, Director of the Musée de l’Orangerie, Stéphane Guégan, scientific advisor to the President of the Musées d’Orsay and Orangerie, Denise Murrell, Ford Basis Postdoctoral Analysis Scholar, Wallach Artwork Gallery at Columbia University, Isolde Pludermacher and Edouard Papet, curators at the Musée d’Orsay.