<videovortex> Dual Context: Vidéoclubparis by Alice Pfeiffer
Geert Lovink
geert at xs4all.nl
Thu Jul 22 08:57:16 CEST 2010
http://rhizome.org/editorial/3668#more
A new gallery for video art, Vidéoclubparis offers a single, hybrid
space with two parallel modes of screening. The first is a monthly,
online exhibition of a dozen young artists, centered around a variety
of themes (from ‘soundtrack’ to ‘bathing suit’, among many others);
presented with basic information about the pieces and their creators.
The second part is a live screening-event organized for each opening,
in unlikely, semi-private places ranging from a sauna to a Bollywood
video store. By seeking out unique locations for screenings, the event
challenges the idea of the formal white cube – an aspect that is
emphasized by the parallel screenings on the web. “The aim is to
create bipolar screenings, we’re trying to do the high jump between
watching videos online and taking people to a place completely
unexpected,” said Stéphanie Cottin, co-founder of the organization,
“the two work well together, because the extravagance of the events
balances out the conventionalism of the online curation.”
Vidéoclubparis emerged out of Cottin and partner Bernard Guégan’s
fascination for video rental machines placed outside video stores all
over the capital – holes in the wall, which have been increasingly
unpopular since the arrival of the Internet. “We like the idea of a
cinema at home, and today, the closest thing is YouTube,” said Guégan,
“so we wanted to keep the idea of diffusion of both the stores and the
Internet.”
Some artists aren’t keen on showing work online, the pair explained,
because of the fantasy of a big screen in a classical gallery. To
solve this, and offer a more typical screening while still bi-passing
the gallery system, every show leads to a tailor-made projection
environment.
“Vincent Ganivet, for example, wanted a ‘real’ gallery and big
projector, something clean and more classical. Yet when we offered him
to show in a Bollywood store, in a space that also generates images,
he liked the idea,” said Cottin. The work Ganivet showed in the store,
Feux d’Artifices ("Fireworks") (2008), portrays fireworks lit during
the daytime within a natural landscape. This results in the opposite
effect of their use in the nighttime: one can barely see the lights
and smoke, as they are swallowed up in the clouds and bright sky.
Ganivet’s failed explosion was shown amongst a dozen Bollywood films,
screened on TV sets all over the shop. Bollywood films often end in
grandiose firework displays, and Feux d’Artifices presented an ironic
contrast to this common grand finale within the genre.
Another example is a group show entitled "Dérives Urbaines," i.e.
Urban drifts. As the title suggests, all the videos deal with the
theme of the post-industrial city, in a dystopian tone. This includes
Sun City (2005) by Olivier Cazin and Thomas Barbey, a silent travel
through a city, constructed entirely from extracts of various Marvel
comics (‘a city about to be Blade-Runnerized’, said Cazin about the
film), or Rhombus Sectus by Raphaël Zarka (2009), which continuously
films, day and night, the same futuristic building.These works were
screened in Bernard Guéguan’s bedroom, on a small TV screen, forcing
the audience to pile up on the same bed. The alienating feel of these
images contrasted with the intimacy of the environment and the
physical proximity of the viewers.
Another group show, called "En Maillot de Bain (In A Bathing Suit)"
was screened in a sauna built in Mains d’Oeuvres, an art center in the
northern Parisian banlieue. In order to enter the wooden room, the
audience had to be in full beach attire. There, they watched films
about the notion of ‘reduction’ (a comic poke at their sudden
sartorial reduction.) Films therefore looked at simple, ‘bare’
gestures detached from a grander context: Tu m' by Pierre Leguillon
(2008) consists of two hands simply flicking through art opening
invitations, or Point Ligne et Particules by Fayçal Baghriche, (2008)
is a one shot film of a man spray-painting a single straight line on a
train, without ever showing the finished result.
“Inevitably, every work generates new ideas, new viewing modes and
contexts,” said Guégan. Vidéoclubparis’s screenings encourage a
recognition of the space outside the monitor, even when detached from
an identifiable, formal context. What both viewing modes have in
common is their proximity to the real world, Guégan believes: when
logging on to Vidéoclub, YouTube, offering videos of a similar format,
is just one click away. When screening outdoors, one isn’t sheltered
from urban life, but rather, embraces it and takes part in it in a
novel manner – such as gathering around a gallery window to look at a
film projected through a keyhole. “Our main question is ‘when do you
people want to see images and how? As visitors online, at the cinema,
with friends?’. We’ll adapt, video by video.” Said Guégan, “But for
now, all we have to offer is a database to access the clips, and if
you make it to the openings, there might be wine and peanuts.”
---
Alice Pfeiffer is a Paris-based freelance journalist, who writes for
the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, Art in America,
Dazed and Confused, Interview and Tank. After graduating with a
Masters degree in Gender Studies from the London School of Economics,
she went on to work as an editorial assistant for the International
Herald Tribune in Paris. She is now working between her couch in
Montmartre and London's East End.
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