JEAN-FRANÇOIS CAISSY | DERBY

JEAN-FRANÇOIS CAISSY | DERBY

Room 2

Jean-François Caissy

DERBY

EXHIBITIN /
AUGUST 30 TO OCTOBER 6, 2012

Our 2012-2013 season opens with two works emerging from the world of cinema: Derby, a video installation by Jean-François Caissy, known primarily as a documentary film-maker, and Off Route 2, an installation including 35 mm film and videos by Amanda Dawn Christie, also a regular at film festivals.

A self-taught filmmaker, Jean-François Caissy was interested in photography initially, a medium he left behind a decade ago to concentrate exclusively on the moving image. With patience and great sensitivity, he allows events the time to develop within fix-framed long shots that stress duration, recalling a photographer’s gaze, his love of carefully composed images, his study of colour and light. He is inspired by the real more than the fictional, and – a native of the Gaspé – he shoots most of his personal projects, which are frequently an occasion to explore essential themes like family, old age and adolescence, in Quebec’s regions. Derby is a first foray into video installation for Caissy, and so it is perfectly natural that filmmaker sought to explore the parameters that make it a different medium from cinema: such as the volatility of the viewer’s attention and the possibility of playing with the presentation apparatus.

Comprised of three large-scale projections surrounding the viewer, the work presents images from a Demolition Derby, a popular activity in North America’s rural areas and consisting of an arena of adult bumper cars in which the goal is to destroy the opponent’s vehicle. Seated in sunlight on open-air platforms, an attentive crowd seems as absorbed by the spectacle as they are disillusioned, waiting for some exceptional event to pierce the filter of their passivity. The violent impacts are viewed in real time when the viewer stands before the images and are balanced by the soundtrack, made from the modulation of ambient sound recorded while shooting. The growling of the motors, which evoke animal cries, gives way to a contemporary musical piece for stringed instruments whose minimalist, plaintive tones add pathos to the scene. Time seems suspended, slowed down, and we feel the febrility and excitement of the participants less than we do the languor and inertia of those viewing the battle. An impression of emptiness persists, arising from the destructive wastefulness we watch; we are fascinated despite ourselves. Rooted in activity that aspires to the ludic and festive, Derby nonetheless creates an atmosphere coloured by existential drama. In making our distance before the images palpable, the work leads us to an awareness of facades, of the screens that authorise our passivity faced with everyday violence.

While expectation also plays an important role in Amanda Dawn Christie’s videos, her project distinguishes itself from that of Caissy by the fact that the rhetoric of cinema is one of its main subjects. Presented on a loop running through a 35 mm projector whose imposing size fills the centre of the space, the film – divided into two sections – avoids taking the path of linear narrative with a beginning and an end separated by a build-up of dramatic tension. One of its sections contains a long travelling shot that sets up the atmosphere: a nearly silent winter landscape at the centre of which is the scene of an oddly aestheticized accident. In an overturned white car, the driver – also dressed in white – hangs upside down with an arm extended out of one window. The motor still smokes. Some cawing ravens, prowling wolves and playful deer are the only witnesses to the accident. Time seems suspended and the landscape bucolic. Fade to black. Quickly, the unwinding of time is re-established and the moment’s immobility is shattered: a door opens, firemen approach and call to the accident victim who shows fear and disorientation. We hear metal crack. Slowly, the camera that was filming the scene from overhead pulls back. The progressive enlargement of the image field reveals a soundman on his perch and the rails permitting the camera’s movement, followed by an observer that seems responsible for the shot.

Fiction or reality? Rather, the reality of fiction being created. Performing in all of her films, Amanda Dawn Christie, whom a fireman calls by name at one point, really experienced the effects of disorientation, nausea and a semi-loss of consciousness brought on by her position in the car. It was maintained for (too) long a period and filmed several times to meet the needs of the shoot, itself undertaken in challenging climatic conditions. Responsible for her position as a captive but nonetheless needing rescue, she appears in charge of the production in one of the scenes, directing her assistant who was showing her the set for the next shot. This position of power, which subverts the relationship generally governing the exchanges between masculine and feminine figures in classic Hollywood scripts, is one of the key issues in the project. Examining cinematographic language, Off Route 2 also shows us the “making of” and the presentation apparatus of film, two elements that are up– or downstream of a final result. Elements that are usually left in the background in order to not disrupt the illusory effect. Two monitors, installed on the wall opposite the projection, present close-ups of certain details from the shoot. In some ways, they unveil the lexicon of the editor seeking to construct dramatic tension by selecting images – another form of cinematographic artifice.

Anne Marie St-Jean Aubre
Translated by Peter Dubé

Jean-François Caissy would like to thank the CALQ and Gilles Arteau, François Wells, Julie Breton, Julien Bilodeau, Nicolas Canniccioni, Mathieu Bouchard-Malo, Shany Bélanger, Roger Proulx, Jacinthe Lessard, Anne-Renée Hotte, Espace F, Coup de Foudre Audio Vidéo, La Cinémathèque québécoise