Markten

Video-projection
Fixed sequence shot
Stereo audio
HD - 16:9
8’38’’

Shown at the Group Exhibition What Now / Now What, Sofia Underground @Sofia Arsenal - Museum for Contemporary Art, Bulgaria

LINK FOR VIEWING
https://vimeo.com/182562950


ENG

Starting from the linearity of the street and the difficulty to remain motionless in the market’s crowd, the research consisted in the accentuation of the milling crowd and the surrounding commercial activities.

Staying still would be to temporarily - and symbolically- deny the ambulatory purchase act. As well as accuentuating the surrounding human activity. The fixed sequence shot pushes the spectator to think away from any narrative aspect, and ask himself about what is left : the context, the human stream and the details, in sound and image. By a simple performed act, the water bucket becomes a resonance chamber of the crowd moves. It also represents the most basic good, in the sympliest way to carry it.

The video tackles the political and social question of the accessibility to water, without being intentionally. That is, by approaching the subject obliquely and preferring poetic evocation to the polemical claim. It is therefore ‘taking a position’ both spatial and poetic, and becomes therefore political - as the artist in the market space.

Furthermore the construction of the image is sort of a reversed American shot where the soil predominates, whereas the water reflections open-up the off-field. It shows the blurred surroundings of the market place as well as a few faces. The reflections contain the reality that the frame of the image doesn’t show.


FR
Partant de l’observation de la linéarité de ce marché et de la difficulté à s’arrêter dans cette foule, la recherche plastique porte sur l’accentuation de ce fourmillement humain, et par conséquent de l’activité marchande inhérente au marché.

S’arrêter reviendrait à refuser momentanément - et symboliquement - l’acte déambulatoire d’achat, permettant d’accentuer par contraste les agitations alentours. Le plan séquence fixe y contribue.  Il pousse le spectateur à se détacher d’une narration, de s’interroger au contexte, et de surligner l’agitation en scrutant l’image.

Par un geste simple, le seau d’eau devient caisse de résonance des mouvements alentours.  
La durée de la vidéo est déterminée par le temps de résistance au poids des seaux. 

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Filmed in Brussels, 2014
Thanks : Frederic Cordier, Toma Muteba Luntumbe