DIETER BEYELSCHMIDT
... and clouds rose from their pockets
... und Wolken stiegen aus ihren Taschen
2021
Full HD color video, 2-ch sound, 7:08 min [➚]
Director · Writer · Camera · Sound Design · VFX · Editor : Dieter Beyelschmidt
Camera · Sound : Rosy Beyelschmidt
Everyone remembers the sudden crash of a monolith at the end of 2001 A Space Odyssey and the interpretive questions it raised. Here it is a strange black box on the floor of a dump truck also loaded with cobblestones from which emerges the mystery that carries the film with its images, skilfully composed by the director and his wife Rosy Beyelschmidt, who is also responsible for the soundtrack. This shot, which resumes after a black fade, carried by the sound of a Polaroid fixing the object seen, feeds the mystery; this repetition refers to the slow downward journey with which the film opened. The tracking shot moved very slowly down the wall of a building whose colours and grain were quite fantastic before coming to a stop on the black box. The soundtrack supported the loop thus described by becoming more mysterious and deeper through beats, shrill noises and the scansion of a gong.
But what is a black box but what we are left with of a disaster? A voice-over that seems like a recording of a conversation between a pilot and his control tower suggests as much. Is this catastrophe that of a man, Pépé, whom he met while jogging at night and who has been unconscious ever since? What remains is wandering in the night, a skilful chiaroscuro revealing a deserted street, and enigmatic objects discovered behind the slats of a blind : scattered objects, motifs beloved by Morandi, remnants of what was once a life. Like the once-quoted André Breton, we are in search of what the sound of a sea shell held to our ear on a New York night evokes and brings forth in us. This nocturnal wandering plays with the slowness of its shots, especially its tracking shots, to make the ghostly presence of the one who lived there, dwelt there in times of need, even more haunting.
Didier Samson,
art curator of the 25rd Rencontres Internationales Traverse
Capacité (presque) illimitée · (Almost) Unlimited Capacity
at: ENSAV · 6 – 31 avril 2022, Toulouse, FR
