BAD CONNECTION

of FATMI Mounir

FRANCE, 2005, 00:15:22

Production : FATMI Mounir
Genre : Video art
Keyword : Allegory, Religion, Society, Violence

Summary :
Bad Connection is a highly complex video in which images and ideas, sounds and colours combine and collide, linking poetic invention and the critical function of art. The titles punctuate a three-part structure, which includes a whole system of resonances, formal variations and interruptions to the narrative line, in a perpetual metamorphasis of pictures that intersperse with the soundtrack.

The young boy photographed by Edward Muybridge runs, laughs and jumps, his movements reproduced by a series of still shots. This sets the scene for the rest of the video, where instants of life, movement and documentary alternate with the permanency of documents, photos, books, and paintings.
The words “Bad Connexion" appear on the screen, giving way to doubt, polysemy and misunderstanding. What is it about? A bad connection, a faulty contact, sinister encounters? The photo of a man, a terrorist wearing a belt of black explosives, confirms this worry.

Bad Connection endeavours to read between the lines of speech and images. mounir fatmi has tried to shake off his personal history, culture and beliefs to become an atheist in order to read Jacques Derrida or Salman Rushdie. The only paradise finally offered here is that of lucidity and critical stance. The sound of typing on a keyboard offers a strange music, a combat of words and gunshot. A young woman crosses her arms over her body girdled with explosives with a sweeping, protective, maternal movement: a suicide bomber, a terrorist willing to sacrifice her life and that of her unborn child in order to defend fundamentalism? Of course not: here, there is no bomb in the books and no detonator, except for the power of images, words and culture, and the determination to promote intelligence and tolerance.
The ambivalence of the situation staged by mounir fatmi is reinforced by the danger of the written word, conveyor of liberty as well as imprisonment, of individuation as well as mental conditioning. Here, the belt becomes protection, and culture, knowledge and awareness create a barrier against the sordid.

Extract from the text "mounir fatmi, Bad Connexion"
Evelyne Toussaint
Lecturer of Modern Art
History at the University of Pau et des Pays de l'Adour. April 2006

Translation: Julien Castel, Suzan Leclerq.
Editing: Caroline Rossiter.

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