LIKE A DESERT MYSTERY
Armand Morin
Romain Gandolphe
Armand Morin
Les Oiseaux, 2019, 10 min 34
Produced with the help of DRAC-Aquitaine and MEMENTO, SPace of Contemporary Art, Auch
This video was created following the invitation to exhibit in an old Carmelite monastery. The nuns lived there reclusive and silent, confined in their cramped cells. This place’s History made me question the spatial imagination of these isolated people, related to their life before or their fantasies. I imagine a crumbling memory of places that are little by little losing their details.
Thus the voice-over, which scrolls in the form of text as an inner voice, begins by describing this silent world. Isolation as a quest or a punishment.
The images of the recluse and the hermit cross to quickly bring to the theme of fleeing. Mankind fleeing its responsibilities, through entertainment and the exploitation of the planet, until finally disappearing. This is the voice-over from a cowardly and greedy humanity who tells his story in fragments from a sort of beyond. AM
Romain Gandolphe
À la recherche, 2017, 23 min
La production a été possible grâce à une bourse attribuée en 2016,
dans le cadre du Prix des Partenaires, de l’Ensba Lyon
I thought I would find the place where Robert Barry went to lose himself, in March 1969, in the Mojave desert. Where he had done a part of his work « Inert Gas Series ». The idea was deeply rooted in me, though I couldn’t trace its origin. As if I have always wanted to wander in the decor of the American West I could see on the photograph documenting his work. This work consists of a measured quantity of atoms of helium in gaseous state. It’s in the air. And in half a century, it must have spread all around the globe. Going there was an absurd fantasy.
During a brief period in the surroundings, I made a detour through the county of San Bernardino, where it is said that the photo had been taken, and spent a few days there. I quickly understood that it was just not there. It was impossible. The geography did not match. Back in France I conducted an investigation and questioned those who could have information leading me to the very place where the invisible work appeared. Of course, it was the artist himself who told me that no one knew.
Having obtained a grant from Ensba Lyon for this purpose, I returned in March 2017 to the Mojave desert. It was my turn to losing myself, in a search that had something of a dream. RG