Ghost(s)

In my previous installation, «The sign of passing time...», I tried to stop time, to catch the moment of it, but its ceaseless movement prevented it from any seizure. The installation catched people in their instantaneity and set them for always in a video-data processing trace - a fixed image recorded in the memory of hard disks – trace that reappeared recurringly according to the mechanics of the software.

Sometimes, those people disappeared, really disappeared, leaving sorrow and regrets around them; but their image remained and it is sought, waited by those who appreciated them.

The Ghost(s) installation first of all proposes to work this idea of mourning: the image as a training of our disappearance and as discovery of our possible future presence in the collective memory. Then, Fantôme(s) wishes to enquire about our own phantoms, about the simultaneous presence, in a same space, of images which emerge from the floods of our memory.

Are we also our own phantoms? Is this fuzzy image with dubious boundaries the conscience - visual - what we have of ourselves?

You approach the screen and look at it : you see the image of the place behind you. When you take a more careful look at what you see, you can slightly discover your own image, like a reflection on a mirror.

Step by step, your image becomes clearer. As you move, your image starts to follow you in an unwedged way: it seems that it is multipling and dissolving in the scenery.

Somethimes, other people appears at your sides. So busy with your own image, you may think that it’s just «other visitors», but you realize that it is not possible: you are alone and the image of these new visitors presents a strangeness that your own image doesn’t possess. You then realize that those visitors are some kind of «phantoms» of the place where you are, phantoms that are visiting you, an alive memory of the place that your presence has awaken.

Watch out ! Maybe, they have their own story.

Ghost(s) is a participative video-data processing installation: it requires the visitors presence and attention to exist.

It works like a mirror : physically, because the diffused image is reversed compared to the traditional video image so we can see ourselves just as we can see it on our mirror ; and it also works a a time mirror, because the more we stay in front of it, the more our image takes shape, which means that it appears to us as ghostly.

The presence of other ghosts sends us back to the memory of the place and to our own existence : we are, also and already, the ghosts of this place. It gives us the feeling of the existence’s fugacity, but also the idea of our continual presence in the memory of the world. In every place we pass by, we leave a part of ourselves.

septembre 2006 - Shangaï, Chine - Colloque économique France-Chine

juillet 2006 - Belgrade, Serbie - festival BELEF en partenariat avec le Centre Culturel Français de Serbie

mars / avril 2006 - Toulouse - festival "Traverse Vidéo" - Vitrine du magasin Agnès b.

octobre 2005 - Martigues - festival "Instants Vidéos" - MJC Martigues

septembre / octobre 2005 - Aix-en-Provence - "Arborescence 5"

mars 2005 - Paris- FNAC Digitale

avril 2005 - Issy-les-Moulineaux - festival "1er Contact" - Centre de Création Numérique “Le Cube”