2013
ON STAGE
Staging, going on stage, self-staging.
Marie Lancelin
Sans titre (Dravolda)
2011, 13 mn 09
Inside an abstract screenplay, a plotless film, moving pictures (tableaux) follow one another. Around the same multi-facetted décor, figures are busy with rituals. They create a set of gestures, forms whose conception and execution depend on the possible permutations of this geometric
construction. What is involved is the creation of a community where the aesthetics, actions and social codes are governed by this geometry. The staged presentation is artificial, craftsmanlike, and the postures are mime-like and plastic. Individual gestures evolve towards collective ones, proposing variants of use and activation. ML
Azin Feizabadi
Time, Space Karbala
2009, 11 mn
Performance : Rehan Bashir
Pardeh-Khani is the art of narrating epic stories such as the battle of Karbala, the martyrdom of Hussain (Shia symbol of resistance). Usually the Pardeh-Khan (narrator) uses a large curtain, a painting, to recite and perform the depicted stories. The style of painting within the Pardeh (curtain) –the deliberate lack of perspective– enables the painter to visualize different plots and sub-plots within the same one-dimensional set. The video re-stages a Pardeh-Khani event, in which the curtain transforms from a physical object of painting into a projected image; the Pardeh-Khan, so the narrator reenacts and performs gestures similar to the events of the battle of Karbala while actually being directed for the video shoot to reenact images of street riots from the events of the 2009 Iranian uprising. Times and spaces melt into each other and provide an alternative urgency –beyond western/eastern political grammar– running from 680 CE through 2009. The video is part of the ongoing series A Collective Memory. AF
Sylvie Ungauer
Prêt-à-porter, défilé/performance
2012, 35 mn (extrait)
This video is the capture of the performance show Prêt-à-porter of 7 March 2012 at the Passerelle Contemporary Art Centre in Brest. To give life to this Burkha-Bunkers, scale models of ten bunkers really built for the Atlantic Wall, I joined forces with the choreographer Gaël Sesboü, the composer and musician Paul Laurent, and an amateur group of Brest-based dancers. These Burkha- Bunkers, clad with an extremely lightweight metal structure, are covered with rough, grey felt in order to incarnate a possible “being with/being within”. This performance is inspired by the codes of the fashion show, to which is added observation of the daily round of “bearers and porters” in the urban space. SU
Henna Riikka Halonen
Moderate manipulations
2012, 6 mn 35
With Financial Support of Saari Manor Residency and AVEK, Finland
The video offers a critical view towards the one’s position within the changing of environment and politics. It aims is to show how positions are subject to constant internally and externally driven change and examine the relation between build and natural environment. The film was done by and in one of the last remaining futuristic houses, designed by Finnish Architect Matti Suuronen in 1968, called Futuro. Two professional advertising models were hired and dressed in outfits reminiscent of Marimekko’s fashion gowns. Constant repetition in a form of a retake puts emphasis not only on the power relations of each object but also expectations of the future to come. The film becomes as a syntagmatic apparatus, almost as simulation of a chess game, where positions are constantly repeated, calculated and slightly adjusted. The idea of scenario is used in order to underline the different positions one takes in relation to future but also to function as reflexive component referring to the construction of the film itself. HRH
Anne Durez
Les mains fragiles
2012, 6 mn 32
Sitting down. Motionless. Letting silence become installed. Stripping off (leaves), drawing, scrutinizing, scanning. Stripping off again. Leaves have dropped. Hands have spoken. 18 minutes. Stop. AD
Vincent Ciciliato
Ordinary Compulsions
2011, 18 mn
Production le Fresnoy, Studio National des arts contemporains
Presentation of several characters grappling with different problems: verification, organization, washing. Each one of them refers to a particular aspect of the TOC. They are the incarnations of them and in a way their allegories.
The shot is static and broad, with a theatrical look. A character appears, far off, in a dark, empty space. He walks towards the foreground, restless, as if bothered by his clothes. Then a chair appears. A first object with which the subject can have a connection.
This is the beginning of a strange tale of solitary bodies, isolated and autonomous, at grips with their private compulsions. Each character will personify a particular compulsion (verification, washing, scratching, etc) invading a space that is increasingly cramped and restricted. VC