Sound & Video Installation²⁰⁰⁷

                6 min a loop until the last breath...
                Production Le Fresnoy
                Dark space(6x5M)/ Recordplayer| Vinyl/Back projection (0,88x0,66M)/
                4 Speakers/Computer G5-Max MSP

 Installation sonore et vidéo²⁰⁰⁷

                      
                    6 min en boucle jusqu’au dernier souffle...
                    Production Le Fresnoy
                    Platine vinyle Disque acétate (Dub Plate)
                    Ecran en lévitation (0,88x0,66M)/  Stéréo doublée
                    4 enceintes MSP5 | Espace obscur  (6x5M)/
                    isolation acoustique/ Max Msp

A vinyl record turns backwards in a dark space.
A suspended screen shows the strange fight between two men, until their bodies are exhausted. The vinyl sets off the image and modifies it as it wears down.  It is a question of confronting a sensitive experience of time and its gradual erosion. It talks about the world, its convulsions, our raw contingency in the middle of this world.
    This « machine » generates a visual and sound refrain until vertigo.

Director of Photography/ Chef opératrice : Elvire Bourgeois                                                                             Cast/Avec : Téo Fdida & Christian Bakalov
Music/Création sonore : Aurélie Garon                          Mix/Mixage : Christian Cartier                                         Programmers/Programmeurs Max MSP : Francis Bras & Matthieu Philippon

Installation’s sketches / Croquis de l’installation

 

Installation’s Views/ Vues de l’installation : 7th International Biennial of Photography and Visual Arts, Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Liège, Belgium/ 24th Documentary film and video festival, Kassel, Germany

Film’s Photograms/Images du film : The image of the Film becomes more noisy and dark as the vinyl  wears down/ Le film devient plus granuleux et dense au fil de l’usure du disque. 

                                                                                                             

Vidéo de l’installation/ Video of the installation (2’43), Dokfest Kassel, Germany

 Extrait du film de l’installation (3’24)

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Christian Milovanoff, Ecrits Réécrits, Editions Naima²⁰²¹ et lacritique.org ²⁰¹⁷

“                                                                                      
… QUI EST LÀ

C’est une lutte à laquelle ils se livrent, c’est une lutte qui est là et non un spectacle, même si nous, devant, nous en sommes les regardeurs. On voit les bras des combattants, le haut de leurs corps seulement. Ils sont deux s’agrippant l’un l’autre, puis un disparaît, puis les deux pour revenir ensuite et continuer la joute.
Comme plusieurs notes tressées pour n’en faire qu’une, c’est aussi un bruit que l’on entend, en continu et qui, pareil aux actions des protagonistes, s’interrompt, s’efface pour réapparaître ensuite, inchangé, invariable.
C’est du cinéma qui est là, celui d’Aurélie Garon : du bruit «cou coupé » et des images, la rencontre de toutes les métamorphoses possibles, le lieu même de l’imagination.”

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Anne-Françoise Lesuisse, Out Of Control, «Les Indomptés», 7th International Biennial of Photography and Visual Arts, Liège, Belgium²⁰¹⁰

“Aurélie Garon est philosophe de formation et plasticienne. Par le biais de ses installations sonores ou vidéos, elle tente d’esquisser les contours de la présence humaine au monde. Elle dresse une cartographie sensitive d’où émerge souvent un principe de résistance au réel, un sentiment d’écart. Elle matérialise, physiquement et visuellement, ces tensions délicates qu’engendrent nos relations au monde. Dans l’installation ici exposée, deux réalités sont jumelées : un tourne-disque qui fonctionne à l’envers et une vidéo qui possède son propre espace-temps. Celle-ci présente un combat entre deux hommes. Une lutte qui prend la forme ambigüe d’une volonté de rapprochement fusionnel tout autant que d’une distanciation existentielle. A nouveau, l’artiste propose une expérience temporelle cyclique qui témoigne sensiblement de notre volonté d’exister dans ce monde mouvant.”

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Holger Birkholz, Kassel ²⁰⁰⁷
24th Documentary Film and Video Festival (DokFest) Kassel, Germany

“INTERFICTION IN KASSEL

Aurélie Garon’s installation consists of two related components – to begin with a record player on which the turntable rotates in the opposite direction, and then a video projection which shows two men fighting with each other. Little by little, the record is abraded and in the process changes the video image. The temporal experience of a continual repetition in the rotation of the turntable, the circling movements of the fighting men, the gradual decomposition of the substance in the wearing away of the vinyl all come into relation with one another. This build-up implies its own inescapable end.
Garon characterises the struggle of the two men as follows : “It is not a real fight, rather something more ambivalent, an embracing and distancing of bodies. It is a struggle against gravity. The efforts of the two are expended on themselves and not against each there. The object is to remain upright. It is a struggle that is necessary in a metaphysical sense, a struggle against the horizontal, without victor and vanquished.” The closeness of the representation binds the viewer of the events shown. This closeness also occurs through the camera, which circles the two wrestlers at varying speeds. At times, it is almost impossible to distinguish the movements of the camera from those of the two bodies. Then the speed increases, the camera circling the two players at a more rapid tempo. The alternating speed gives a reeling impression; the camera’s rise and fall can not be predicted, forcing the viewer to go along with the action, to surrender to the vertigo.

In a similar fashion, the sound in the room alternates between louder and more quiet phases. It grows more intense and then diminishes, sometimes in short intervals and then very slowly. The atmospheric sound focuses our concentration on the actions of the wrestlers. It surrounds the viewers in its sonorous uniformity as does the dance-like struggle between the two bodies.

The source of the sound in the exhibition space is a record player that generates sound on a physical basis. The needles glides over the record grooves, eliciting varying vibrations in the needle. The weight of the needle, dust particles or shaking of the device all have an impact on the surface of the record, which is gradually abraded. Rustling, hissing sounds are a clear indication of this ongoing wear. But in Garon’s work, the wear of the record is also reflected in a modification of the images. The colours begin to fade. The monochrome character of the image consisting of the cold beige tones of the shirts and trousers of the wrestlers together with their pale skin colour gradually becomes warmer. Little by little the images become grainier, while at the same time becoming less bright. Just as the record is ultimately destroyed by endless replaying, so too does the video image disintegrate…until the final breath is taken.

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Brenda Goldstein, POV magazine, Toronto, Canada²⁰⁰⁸

“KASSEL CONFIDENTIAL

It is good to watch Aurelie Garon’s piece «C’est un bruit qui est là, qui permet de respirer on dirait...» («It seems it’s a noise that allows you to breathe...») while realizing that oxygen gives us life but the act of respiration causes our tissues to oxidize and deteriorate over time. It is this paradox that Garon’s installation captures with a projection of two men fighting without purpose or determination. Neither scores a TKO; neither goes down; the fight continues, half hearted, at a stalemate. The violence is futile. In front of the projection is a record player. The video is being played from the vinyl itself, a device of Garon’s invention, but the player turns in the opposite direction than it should, causing the needle to slowly etch away the image, degrading it slightly with each play. This piece is striking for its refined sensibility, its clever use of analogue media to describe the epehemerality of the digital signal. At the same time this ugly scene manages to touch on the sublime paradox at the centre of life.”

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