Quick access :
Photo
Drawings
Paintings
|
 Nature and Dyad in Space
"How is it that our civilisations, which possesses such means to act upon nature and space, masters the sense of this action so poorly? As a result, these landscapes that make us uneasy because we find them ugly or incomprehensible, these degradations of the environment that appear absurd or criminal to us, and that are never the less the product of our ordinary activities."
Extract from Médiance de Milieu en Paysage by Augustin Berque. The littoral landscape recalls the perpetual state of flux of the sea on the earth's crust: it is a zone of transition, an unattainable limit between the two worlds of earth and water, a stigmatisation of this unstable equilibrium. It is decisive that the research take place in this transitory space, where the conjunction of the two worlds creates a unity of contraries, the point of origin of the difference and diversity that I call "Geo-philosophical dyad landscape". I believe it is necessary to invent a relationship to the landscape by the projection of utopias or the creation of imaginary universes. The landscape can be created by an utopia, a necessary utopia, centred around the re-appropriation of oneself and of the environment. I believe the landscape is always at the crossroads of sensory interpretations which are given or imposed upon it. This means that every real landscape serves as a place to express power. The landscape imposes itself as the relationship between a point of view and a place, or the representation of a place. It is for me to question this space by exploring it, and to elaborate a re-appropriation. The landscape must be seen in the platonic sense of the word: that it recreates what it sees. It is game about limits, starting with the back and forth game of consciousness. A back and forth game between the object and the symbol. A sort of diagnostic that only confirms that nothing in the landscape changes at the same time, at the same speed or in the same direction. It is the health-line of this zone, where the process of discontinuity, of fracture, is inscribed into continuity. It is from here, from this "ground-zero" that utopia may begin it's journey.
My work is born from this reflection and grows from it today. The space that is offered in a given place, is for me, an invitation to a journey. In my work, it is precisely the material that is transformed, gesture after gesture, that tells and creates the journey. The natural materials (hemp, flax...) used to create the pieces, are manipulated at different stages of their fabrication, from string to rope (and inversely) passing by all stages of their fabrication. The manipulations that the materials undergo, and the techniques that were acquired throughout the evolution of the work are: knotting, braiding, weaving, knitting, macramé, crochet... A prosody is drawn out through these techniques. It is to say: a regulation of the relationship of quantity and intensity of each work, which takes form by the weaving, joining and braiding. When looking at the line, the eye can perceive the gestures of the hand and the movements of the body that are inscribed in it and that it communicates. (Van Develde talks of the "dance of the eyes", which, communicated to the brain is intoxicating ). The proliferation of these different forms of bonding elaborates a complex weave which organizes the utopian space into a network. The small and almost imperceptible mobility of this suspended architecture, brings forth the antagonistic tensions that make it oscillate in the search of a fragile point of equilibrium. The installation and the journey are used as a map. A map that is a working instrument that does not represent the space, but creates it. A map in which nomadism is the rule. It is a process of communication, a mental diagram, internal map-making. It is an open system with multiple entrances (rhizome). The networks it builds become places of interference between symbol and territory. It is also, the material that accounts for the grounds from which all journey begins. To model, is to give body to improbable spaces, it is to create time in the intervals. It is to question our relationship to time by imprisoning it in the net. (See also Jean Tardieu: Les Mailles du Filet exctract from the Shadow section). Régis Failler
|
