Nord, Film, Super 16 mm on HD, stereo sound, 40′
Nord, Installation, 5 fims Super 16mm, stereo sound, 2008
The installation Nord is based on films made in the North of France, between Lille, Roubaix and Dunkerque. It is composed of a succession of sequence shots filmed with a very mobile camera guided by the gestures of the protagonists. This way of filming, very close to the body, almost “blind”, creates an incomplete vision that leaves a lot of room for the viewer’s imagination. He thus witnesses life and the tensions between different human communities such as unemployed textile workers, a gallodrome and its cockfights…
As in the genre scenes of Flemish painting, the camera pays close attention to the details of life and composes a complex picture of society. The installation also alludes to the paintings of Remy Cogghes, a famous painter from the end of the 19th century who won the Prix de Rome in Belgium.
The installation is made up of diptychs constituting paintings spread throughout the space.
This wandering through the rooms and images allows the viewer to encounter these “worlds” and to follow the words of those who have lost their activity, whose gestures still retain the memory.
Nord allows us to grasp the loss (of work, of tradition), the violence of this loss and the forms of social links through what remains: the gestures.
Nord, ouvriers-ouvrières, installation and film, Super 16 mm on video, 2x 5’30
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