Jogging dans le parc

INSTALLATION VIDÉO / JOURNAUX ÉLECTRONIQUES / JOGGING DANS LE PARC GALERIE JACQUELINE FELMANN, PARIS FÉVRIER-MARS 1989

Concept

Around the perimeter of a closed space, formed by the four walls of a gallery, a number of luminous newspapers with electronic diodes are placed. Sentences, words and onomatopoeia supposed to be the thoughts of a person jogging in a park in the morning will scroll across the strips of these newspapers at different speeds, speeding up or slowing down. Her dog, Plato, follows her faithfully, sometimes at a distance, sometimes on her heels... As the person runs, his thoughts telescope in his head. Sometimes it's the present that comes to the fore, like avoiding a stone on the path, other times it's the past that dominates, and still other times it's what he'll do the next day... or next year that drives his thoughts. The texts are different in each diary. Only the three words: "I'm running, I'm running, I'm running even faster..." are common to all of them and recur continuously. Each diary has its own programming, which gives the overall system a random feel. The aim is to place the visitor to the exhibition at the centre of a visual dynamic. The newspapers have all been deliberately placed at eye level, at reading speeds that are sometimes at the limit of perception, creating at times that sensation of vertigo that we feel when we're exerting ourselves and our breath comes in short supply. On a video monitor at the centre of the environment, a looped video shows us a close-up of a runner from behind, running endlessly with a dog at his heels. A closed-circuit TV colour camera sends the bright red letters of the newspapers scrolling past in an endless race back to a second monitor in very close-up. It's an attempt at a kind of plastic writing in motion, in which visual facts and dynamics are intrinsically intertwined with what might appear to be a literary statement...

Device

• 1 moniteur grand écran Sony
• 1 moniteur cm 95, Sony
• 6 journaux lumineux à diodes électroniques SayagElectronic
• 1 caméra 1800 Sony

• Monographie Fred Forest " Coloquio artes ", Fondation Calouste Guibenkian, n° 82, septembre 1989, Lisbonne.