DEBACLE

of WAQUANT Michèle

CANADA, 1992, 00:16:00

Production : CICV PIERRE SCHAEFFER, MUSEE D'ART CONTEMPORAIN DE MONTREAL, DE 2 CHOSES LUNE, PRODUCTIONS FRANCIS CARON
Genre : Video art
Keyword : Water, Testimony, Nature, Allegory

Summary :
The breaking up of the ice of the Chaudière river during the night of March, the 27th, 1992. The voices of people in La Beauce, Quebec are heard, sometimes stolen from the radio. Ice-breaking words, softness, violence, meaningful and meaningless things. Their exasperated words collide with things as they repeat their submission to nature and life in a thousand ways. Red night : the ice breaks at night, as dreams topple into their own annihilation . Fragments of paintings are fleetingly reconstructed : passers-by watching the ice drift away become the musicians in SEURAT's "Parade de cirque", a man carrying another man on his shoulders evoke POUSSIN's "Le déluge", a woman running through town grimaces like a Medusa figure" (Michèle WAQUANT).

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