Five HDV video installation (5'15, 3'25, 8', 2'50, 2'10)
with the participation of Michèle Debrenne, Henry Fontaine, Sylvie Heuclin, Lucienne Philippe and Luisa Seba
The five micro-fictions take place directly on the train tracks that cross through Ferrière-la-Grande and show an imaginary timeline. The people who are met at various points on that line improvise alone, like the protagonists in a science fiction movie. Except that here, “science fiction” should no longer be understood as an indifferent form of predicting the future, unavoidable and catastrophic, but to the contrary as everyone’s capacity to transgress everyday time, to enter, in one’s own manner and means, in a utopic temporality. Because the train tracks, at once inside and outside of the residents’ life, at once a mark of the past with the industrial development and a way of transit towards an unknown future, becomes like the mental stage for these narratives put in gestures.
Experiential gestures (playing a melody, pitting oneself against a locale) or compulsive gestures (collecting, knitting), all are guided by the horizon of childhood, where the barriers of true and false crumble. The important thing is not the pretense of leaving for a long voyage under the protection of a troop of animals, but rather the potentiality of multiple places and histories to which this departure links us. To organize one’s environment according to the internal worlds that inhabit us, to touch objects like witnesses of our fragile link to the present… this is the attitude of he who “exits” his role instead of entering it, conscious that it is sometimes necessary to cut oneself off from other people in order to better see the “social game” appear. Thus the sequence of shots, which cuts through the space while intensifying the duration, reveals the ritual dimension of our ways of doing, of being, and of appearing, and our resistances to the norms of language and of living together.
with the participation of Michèle Debrenne, Henry Fontaine, Sylvie Heuclin, Lucienne Philippe and Luisa Seba
The five micro-fictions take place directly on the train tracks that cross through Ferrière-la-Grande and show an imaginary timeline. The people who are met at various points on that line improvise alone, like the protagonists in a science fiction movie. Except that here, “science fiction” should no longer be understood as an indifferent form of predicting the future, unavoidable and catastrophic, but to the contrary as everyone’s capacity to transgress everyday time, to enter, in one’s own manner and means, in a utopic temporality. Because the train tracks, at once inside and outside of the residents’ life, at once a mark of the past with the industrial development and a way of transit towards an unknown future, becomes like the mental stage for these narratives put in gestures.
Experiential gestures (playing a melody, pitting oneself against a locale) or compulsive gestures (collecting, knitting), all are guided by the horizon of childhood, where the barriers of true and false crumble. The important thing is not the pretense of leaving for a long voyage under the protection of a troop of animals, but rather the potentiality of multiple places and histories to which this departure links us. To organize one’s environment according to the internal worlds that inhabit us, to touch objects like witnesses of our fragile link to the present… this is the attitude of he who “exits” his role instead of entering it, conscious that it is sometimes necessary to cut oneself off from other people in order to better see the “social game” appear. Thus the sequence of shots, which cuts through the space while intensifying the duration, reveals the ritual dimension of our ways of doing, of being, and of appearing, and our resistances to the norms of language and of living together.
Text written by Morad Montazami, art historian and critic