Chronological presentation of my recent works

3) The series DNA 2005-in progress
(integral work of photos, videos, performances and installations)

After a spending time of convalescence, I looked at myself in the mirror, and I saw soft and fine hair stuck to my head. There were also some parts of the skin without any hair left.
My head was that of a newborn baby.  I was born again!
Since that moment, my invisible body is out of the shade little by little, and is becoming a new material that I discover and manipulate.
Starting from a video of my body’s ordinary movement, I take apart my gestures and then recompose them on digital images or video animations. It is a research on the multiplication of a gesture which seems to be repeated and continued infinitely. This process created the project “the series <DNA> “ which consists of several variations. One body became a cell to form another element which transcends a simple body.

Following this research, I realised some performances and installations with projection.

DNA : revolution (video installation in-situ)  October 2006
La Nuit Blanche (The White Night)
at one of footbridges over Canal St. Martin, Paris.

The installation is a video projection of a variation from the first version «DNA», that is linked like a chain on the reverse side of the footbridge.
The water of the canal reflects the images like a mirror. The original images and their reflections make an infinite loop.

The life turns like a wheel, non-stop and non-stop.
Sometimes physically, sometimes immaterially.
Like light exists under whatever appearance, life exists always unchangeable. The spring of life doesn’t dry up.
The revolution continues eternally.

I restarted thinking about “ life before birth”.
What is the origin of the life?
Life, from where does it come from and to where does it go?
A fœtus is not yet born, but it is alive.
What is life before birth?
Life, at which moment does it start?
Does it start the moment the double helix separates and has contact with another?
Then, before this moment, one helix by itself is not alive?
It’s not really, it’s not dead!
Is it then another form of life?

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DNA : ascension (video installation in-situ)    September 2007
La Fête Eclairante /  European Patrimonial Day
video projection on a smokestack of an old knitted-fabric factory
12, rue Bégant, Troyes France

It seems that images come out of the ground, climb up the smokestack, and integrate with the sky.

The smokestack stands erect toward the sky. When I created the video « DNA », at the beginning I did not think about fertilisation -- although this subject is very intensely related.  My original thought was rather about spiritual continuation or multiplication of the cytoplasm. But a smokestack let me remember suddenly the reproduction by the two opposite sex.

In May 2006, I created a performance « Ti soffio via» with an Italian dancer, Alexija Lyndin at Château de Veauce, Allier France. We projected video « DNA » on a big marble fireplace (The French word ‘cheminée’ means not only ‘chimney(smokestack)’ but also ‘fireplace’) in the castle built in the Middle Ages. Video images seemed like a flame that burst up and burn out.  In comparison with smokestack, that « DNA » may have been a sexual impulse which could not find exit and misfired.

Life, at which moment does it start?
Is it the moment when a sperm meets an ovum?
Then, before this moment, a sperm by itself is not alive? An ovum by itself is not alive?
It’s not true. They are alive. If not, why someone can see the light?

Sometimes we chose a life with a body. But life continues either way -- with or without a body. A life with a body is no more than a passage. However, there is a certain reason to be born with a body. Why I was born with it?

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awa (video installation in-situ)   june 2007
Festival wroclawnonstop
5 empty tanks of beer and a narrow corridor in an old beer factory with soap bubbles
Wroclaw Pologne

When I heard that the exhibition space for this festival will be in an old beer factory, I started to observe bubbles or form, not only of beer but also of champagne, of soda water…etc. It was for editing new video of the series <DNA>.
« awa » (bubble / foam) is the sixth video, which is inspired by the head of beer, keeping the same principal of the <DNA> series.
I went to Wroclaw in April 2007 for location hunting, and I found 5 empty tanks of beer. The front of the tank is ballooned up like a pregnant woman and there is an oval hole at the lower part.

At the same instance, Marcin Wiktorski, the art director of this space, showed me his photographs. A child with 2 heads.  A Baby who was born without life or who has lost his life as soon as he was born. Only the body remains in the time stopped. This life which was alive certainly in the womb, went away as soon as the body left it and saw the light of day.
My elder brother was born dead. They did not put him in formalin, so his body is no longer.  But the memory of life in her uterus is always alive in my mother. It seems to me that my life with a body was less precious than his life without a body. Consequently my body was dominated by my brother’s spirit. I would have liked to use my body as I wanted, but my brother did not allow it. He was always angry because my body was not like he wanted. I felt like I was living in a body with 2 heads.

I said already that the first period of my artistic career was devoted to going away from my body and to create another body in the darkness.

A light springs out the darkness.

Some bubbles break quickly, others drift longer. Some of them burst open, and the others dissolve in. But all bubbles come to 0.
By the way, they say that the death of jellyfish is simply to melt in water. In Japanese, we can write the jellyfish as <the water + the mother> (There are several ways for writing). Is a jellyfish the mother of water?  Or is water the mother of a jellyfish? Or both, such as chicken and egg question.
The life of one bubble is maybe short, but they are born one after the other. They repeat the life inexhaustible, eternal.
Like death, the beginning of one body doesn’t mean the real start of the life.
The life of my brother did not finish when it left from his body.

Ceaselessly the river flows, and yet the water is never the same, while in the still pools the shifting foam gathers and is gone, never staying for a moment...
(The opening sentence of the Hojoki, a short work written in 1212 by Kamo-no-Chomei)

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