The two video portraits of “MALY”, from the video series “SUDDEN”, are a reflection on time. They question the notion of truths, of metamorphosis and of evanescence.
Here they reveal a birth, on the one hand the face of a woman becoming a mother and on the other her child called Maly gradually emerging. These videos evolve using software designed for this project, and their real time, extremely short, is swollen, denatured, so that the instant that is filmed spreads out over a life, both metaphorically and temporally.
The images generated live, still moving, seem fixed, and each gesture, as rapid and as infinitesimal as it is originally, becomes observable. The experience of the instant is as if suspended but leads to a loss of control, its evolution is perceptible only with difficulty and the images have to be ignored in time, escaping them in order to seek to catch them again.
The videos develop constantly although the electronic equipment is off, as they are predetermined, inevitable, inflexible and irreversible. For “La Centrale électrique”, they last for 23 days 23 hours 50 minutes, closing when the child emerges from its mother, on Sunday 9 January 2011 at 17.50, to begin life outside the mother’s womb, counting time remaining and time passing.
The video “ANA” celebrates an anniversary, two children blowing out the
candles on a cake. Behind this apparent warmth there is mounting tension and it closes when the candles are blown out, when the child in the video “MALY” is born on Sunday 9 January 2011.
These three portraits are an illusory attempt to control and to dominate time, everywhere but imperceptible, an observation of our inability to understand, to accept the complexity of this primary phenomenon, a vanity.
Duration: 23 days 23 hours 50 minutes
© Catherine Menoury & Christian Laval
Exposition
