The Wave / with Falke Pisano

2009

16 mm film, 13"57

ed. 1/5: private collection

 

Falke Pisano and Benoît Maire begun collaborating in 2006. Concerned with language as material, The Wave, a 16 mm film, can be seen as part of an ongoing conversation - that moves across sculptures-as-harbingers-of-thought to the language of structural film making. The Wave, like letter writing, is constructed through long distance dialogue. The film contains two distinct voices and angles that never merge, producing gaps and inconsistencies that break language apart in a very open narrative. In the fist part of the film Falke Pisano suggests, constructs and investigates a relationship between an object and a gaze, between an object and a subject. The object she describes is round, but has edges, it is smooth, and abstract. What happens to this object in relation to a subject, what is it without the gaze of a subject? Can we imagine an object without the subject? What is an object if it is not for me? The next scene is orchestrated by Maire. We are on a sandy beach, it is windy and the sea is rough, big waves repeatedly and rhythmically make their way toward the shore. A branch has been stuck in the sand, crossed by another, creating an improvised assemblage that marks out a situation, producing a 'place'. Within this context Maire has placed a table and a chair. On the table are a number of objects; different glasses, casts of hands in a variety of colors, a clock. A man and a woman interact with the set of objects, as one moves them around the other observes - gently alluding to the instability of meaning. The scene is silent although the protagonists speak, as there is no sound, nor subtitles. There is a clear shift again as the viewer is transposed to a park – from 'nature' to 'culture'. The camera finds a public sculpture, a big concrete shaped shelter. People are sitting inside it. Like the assemblage of branches on the beach this sculpture - frames, communicates, sets up a location that directs people to behave in a certain way.

 

Text: Lisa Panting & Malin Stahl