«Play it now» - 2003 -
This audio-video installation is in the form of a floor mat (blue carpet), part of which is cut to be raised and suspended from the ceiling. This piece of soil constitutes a projection screen. This installation unfolds in space by presenting two distinct spaces: front and back of the screen.
On the front side the raised part of the carpet is cut in the center by a text: PLAY IT NOW, visible in the semi-darkness of the room thanks to the projection of a slide image on the back. The luminous text is projected in its turn upside down on the opposite wall or on the spectator. On the ground, a video monitor continuously broadcasts (30 ') a film whose stroboscopic and syncopated movement causes an intermingling of images of carpet patterns and salon singers. The 5 singers interpret in canon and in chorus a Romanian ritornello "the bridge of stones" nursery rhyme rhythmic with 3 sentences. The circular movements of the camera cause a loss of reference marks. The patterns of the carpet mix with the subjects, as if by superimposition similar to the sung words that collide and are lost in a hubbub, a kind of heady cacophony.
On the back of the screen, a color slide is projected onto the cut-out text (upside down). This photograph shows a woman in her back, camera in hand, filming the city (Iasi) at night in the reflection of a storefront of hunting items. The blurring of photography, transforms the image into color pattern (tapestry) echoing the front of the room (where the text reads in the place). On the ground, the cutout of the screen leaves the floor visible. The cut-out letters which constitute the text "play it now" are placed on the floor (hollow space) and are not fixed to the floor, which allows the visitor to be able to modify (cross) words and to compose other texts with Equivalent letters in other languages. The text proposed as an invitation is "i want" the other letters being abandoned on the periphery ... (on the evening of the vernissage the ground text "i want, y, o, p, l" from "play it now" was transformed into "italy down" in reference to the passive behavior of an Italian contingent of the UN during serb attacks, the d becoming a p).
The raising of the floor mat as a screen space constitutes an attempt to partition the space into a place of mental projection, the images (video and photo) are blurred. The boundary between the ground and the screen appears as a margin and the projection on the back of the ground marks the immateriality of the border / boundary fiction-reality. The still image projected on the back refers to the image of the director (image and narrative maker, handyman of fiction, arranger of situations). Director, view from behind, as spectator of the world, recorder of the reflection of the city in the showcase of the street. The fixed and passive position of the back character, refers to the action visible on the other side of the screen. The recording space is on the reverse side of the mat, and the one of the action and reading on the front.
The extraction of soil visible on the front, gives to read a kind of subtitling in hollow (cut letters): invitation to the game and the action. This text "play it now" appears as subtitle of a missing image (imperatives of recommences): from the video game to the acting game. The ritornello which accompanies the unstable motif of the carpet in the video film is an endless rhyme: invitations to always start again, rebuild: "we had to cross the bridge of stones but it collapsed, in order to pass we have to reconstruct it bigger , More solid ... ": like a history of passages ...
Singing, sounds, dance and endless and startless patterns.
The screen space (floor) becomes a place of round, repetition, future of becoming. The repetition of the motif and the melody constitute a physical and sound space that causes a loss of landmarks: stunning dance, future or become suspended ...
CLT 2000