VIDEOZONE 4 (CCA)

Video Art from France: Program I

Curator: Brent Klinkum (Director of Transat Vidéo, France)
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28.11

14:30
The Center for Contemporary Art 5, Kalisher St., Tel Aviv

(Total running time: 69 min)

Among contemporary artists using video in France, a radical transformation has taken place over the past five years or so. The two programs curated for VideoZone set out to illustrate these new directions. The increasing scarcity of production funding and its changing nature, along with international mobility, has led many French artists to regard political and social questions around the world attentively, to practice (self-)derision and develop new forms of writing, resulting in a proliferation of documentaries de creation—creative, personal documentaries.
It is not only countries on the periphery of the contemporary art scene that have benefited from international residencies; for many French artists it has also become a major source of production funding, and for the younger generation—a chance to work without financial worries and to confront unknown audiences. Antoine Boutet spent over six months researching in China before narrowing his material down to begin Zone of Initial Dilution, which will soon be followed by a second work, also shot in China, based on water resources. Hear Me, Children-Yet-To-Be directed by Sandy Amerio was the result of a writing residency with the Laboratoires d’Aubervillers, one of the numerous new spaces to have been created in France, with the capacity to nurture emerging artists.
Another important aspect of the increasingly international art scene in France has its roots in the number of artists pursuing their education overseas, which besides improving language skills, has led many of the artists in this selection to be more frequently exhibited or screened outside rather than in their home country. Despite winning three prizes in different festivals, Neil Beloufa’s Kempinski has not yet been screened in France. The establishment of Le Fresnoy, a post-graduation art school in Tourcoing, has also had a particularly healthy influence; approximately half of the 24 students admitted each year are non-French, with many of them staying on afterwards to pursue their careers. As a magnificent illustration, Enrique Ramirez’s Brises is a single sequence shot which effortlessly strikes a balance between memory and politics.
In a different register, Pascal Lievre and Jean-Gabriel Periot both have virtually become French ambassadors with their works being screened every week somewhere around the world. Even though they would decline any overt political stance, they have developed a corpus of work in which archiving and animation for Periot and the diversion of popular culture through performance for Lievre have distinct critical viewpoints.
Possibly one of the most interesting aspects of the present art scene in France is the number of second and third generation North African artists appropriating their cultural identity. Katia Kameli’s Bledi, un scenario possible is the result of ceaseless voyages back to her roots and her quest to understand.

Supported by the Embassy of France & the French institue, Tel Aviv

Neil Beloufa

Kempinski (The future in present tense), 2007, 14:00 min
Welcome to Kempinski, a mystical and animist place introduced to us by its people. This science-fiction documentary has no script, and its scenario is set in motion by a specific game rule in which the interviewed participants imagine the future and speak of it in the present tense.

Pascal Lievre

Patriotic, 2005, 4:05 min
Patriotic revolves around passages from the Patriotic Act, which was ratified after 9/11, dealing with the struggle against the archenemy—terrorism—to the music of Titanic.

Antoine Boutet

Zone of Initial Dilution, 2006, 30:00 min
A document addressing the urban transformation of China's Three Gorges region, being dramatically changed due to the construction of the world's largest hydro-electric dam. Before the end of the construction work, planned for 2008, this video appraises the state of the towns and banks of the Yangtze, from those which are in ruins or disappeared to ones that are booming, trying to make out the consequences on both the landscape and the population vis-e-vis the planned rise in the water level.

Jean-Gabriel Periot

Ni juman no borei (200 000 fantomes), 2007, 10:00 min
Hiroshima 1914-2006. Illustrated via 600 photographs of the Genbaku Dome in Hiroshima, the history of the twentieth century files past. In 1914, the Dome was a dazzling center of elegant urban life in Japan. On August 6, 1945, the atomic bomb called Little Boy brought all this to a definitive end. Within one second, 78,000 people perished, and the city was completely destroyed, the Dome included. Even after a disaster of this magnitude, life can still go on. Hiroshima 2006 is indistinguishable from any other metropolis—except for the Dome. It looks on in silence: in the center of the screen, still damaged by the fire. The Dome is the same size in every photograph, although it appears to shrink as colossal buildings sprout up around it.

Enrique Ramirez

Brises, 2008, 10:00 min, France/Chile
"I was born in 1979, six years after the military coup in Chile. I grew up under the dictatorship, in my mother’s arms. She told me that, paradoxically, it was the happiest period of her life.
I am a piece of this history, full of contradictions. After democracy returned, the Presidential Palace building was repainted in its original color, an off-white, and the pedestrian entrance was reopened in time for the 30th anniversary of the coup d’etat. For the very first time people could walk through its halls.
This was an initial symbol of the changes afoot. Henceforth, after 19 years of democracy, the population can only enter Government House by way of a route running north-south, that is, from the Plaza de La Constitucion to the Plaza de La Ciudadania. Going in the opposite direction is forbidden.
It is indeed a sign that the doors of the Presidential Palace have been opened; but at the same time it symbolically implies that one should not go back in history, that one should look only forward." (E. Ramirez)

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