DWELLING (2006-2009)

2-channel video-installation –datastream – surround sound rear-projection onto 2 contiguous framed screens/ dimensions variable 11min35s, in loop.

The video-installation Dwelling constitutes a meditation on place and time, and is deliberately situated in an ambiguous area between painting and film. The video is constructed on the basis of animated photographs and consists of six sequences that form an open story structure. This is a rear-projection onto two contiguous framed screens in a darkened room: a viewing device that forms a diptych around a central “gap”, which breaks up the totality of the image.

Destoop lays the emphasis on the gaps, breaches, discontinuities that run through the work as a leitmotif: “Dwelling plays on various levels with the relationship between continuity and fragmentation: in the spatial effect of the installation, in the time intervals between the image sequences, in the internal structure of the images (with a discontinuity beween foreground and background), in the contrasts between the Australian desert and the Scandinavian coast or beween the grand panoramas and the fragile interiors; finally, due to the open structure, also between the work and the observer. This open, unresolved structure prompts active reading on the part of the viewer.”

The piece, by merely suggesting the outline of a story, includes various references to genre cinema, ranging from westerns and road movies to Bergman’s Persona, triggering our cinematic memory of place. Using different animation techniques, camera movements and lights were recreated in post-production “(…) lending the landscapes an unreal, theatrical aspect. This robs them of heir dimensions, as it were, making them look as miniatures. The notion of landscape is problematised through these radical manipulations”.

Frank Maes, from the catalogue of “Beyond the Picturesque”, S.M.A.K. 2009

CREDITS
Photography, compositing, direction: Alexis Destoop
Extra compositing: Devi Mallal
Music: Wim Lots, Brendan Walls
Sound design: Peter Lenaerts
Production: Buda Arts Centre, City Sonic, S.M.A.K.