Les Rencontres de la photographie d'Arle -- L’Engagement

Date | 2024.1.7-9.29.2024
Venue | Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation
Curator | BASILETTI Florent

"Françoies", 2015-2024, video and sound installation, dimension variable.

“Rumor has it that people living in the Arctic communicate as such: they can’t hear each other due to the heavy wind and snow flooding sky and earth, so they only have to bring home each other’s voices frozen into snow blocks and light a fire to roast them leisurely for the ears.” -- Conversation, Hsia Yu

The work entitled Françoise unites all sorts of prayers and wishes: “Please make my dreams come true.”, “Make me become a useful person.”, “I wish to lead a carefree life.”, “I wish to see my father again.”, etc. Like many yearnings that dimly float, the whispering of dreams and desires are uttered as soaring luminous spots, transcending along the circulating discourses toward a meditative “listener/interlocutor/Other”.

As a painting of diversified strokes, human voices constitute a sound field where the speeches, apparently unrelated to each other, seem to respond in echo. The intertwined speeches are transformed into indistinct “phones” forming a chaotic yet rhythmic, similar yet differentiated sound, and thus weave a network of ideas detached from semantics. As the discourses continue, the speakers’ faces seem to fade out, and ideas are detached from the “self” of an individual. However, the "discourses" are always in search of an absent "interlocutor", like rubbing a coin hidden under a sheet of paper, one must wait until the impression of the other becomes clear little by little, so that he can carry the prayers of the past into the present.

Françoise shows a sound portrait: the whispers of different people, like multiple brush strokes forming the background of the painting, highlight the main subject, Françoise. The work reflects human uneasiness about the future and an aspiration to connect with Others. It invites the public to immerse themselves in the invisible network of ideas to experience the connection and resonance between themselves and others.