Temps Mort

Mohamed Bourouissa
,
DZ, FR
,
2009
,
video
,
colour
,
18'

“There is something fragile in this project, which mirrors the fragility and fugacity of the process itself of making the images. Every image has been made with the help of a friend who is in prison. Situations are established and filmed with a mobile phone, hence the poor quality of the images. This video puts forward the intimate and at the same time distant, relationship between two persons, one free and the other one in captivity; between a real human relation and a digital communication; between a prison system which puts a person in the situation of fundamental isolation, of retraction in a closed space; and a free circulation: a profusion of information turning him into a member of the ‘media community’. And at the same time, it’s the encounter between two temporalities, one slowed down, stopped, frozen by the prison environment, and the other one fast, dazzling, in constant movement. That’s why I chose the title ‘Temps mort’, for these images are in that duality of time being close and very distant at the same time”. (MB) 

Because We Are Visual

Olivia Rochette & Gerard-Jan Claes
,
US
,
2010
,
16mm
,
colour
,
34'

A brooding glance in to the world of online video diaries, circulating in the deep shadows of YouTube and related platforms. There we find a never-ending stream of micro-confessions and intimate exposures, teenage angst and moody blues, broken hearts and timid souls in search for comfort and belonging. It doesn’t matter if essentially there is nothing to say nor show, as long as it contributes to the driving flow of information. Anything can be said, everything must be disclosed, to the point that there is ultimately nothing left to see. It does not matter if nobody watches or listens, what matters are the traces we leave behind in our endless search for identity and significance. What matters is mattering itself. Looking for an answer to our loneliness and insecurity, overwhelmed by the omnipresence of images, we become images ourselves. Here we are: desperate bodies without desire, crude visuals without necessity or consequence. Welcome to the spectacle of banality.