Shortstories (Marquise, Gloria et Parc Central Taipei), 2000 - 2008
Shortstories is a video installation created in 2008 by the French artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. It is composed of 3 adjacent spaces, in which 3 different films are screened, Marquise, Gloria and Parc Central, Taipei, which are viewed without any predefined order. The green shade of the walls, carpets and letters of the plaques is defined in a very precise way by the artist, according to an internationally codified grid of colours. Marquise is a looped 5-minute video, which can also be presented on its own in a long, 30-minute version. The marquise of the title refers to a concrete structure located in the Ibirapuera Park of Sao Paolo, built by Oscar Niemeyer, a famous Brazilian architect. Its columns, supporting a flat concrete roof, allow it to interconnect different buildings in the park, while providing shelter for visitors. A young boy recalls a childhood memory under this marquise, in voiceover: one day when he was playing there, he was persuaded that he felt one of the columns move while he was leaning against it. Gloria consists of a 5-minute looped tracking shot in a park in the centre of Rio, in Brazil. This park is a copy of a French-style garden, but does not have perfectly straight contours. The tropical climate and the abundance of the vegetation constantly overruns all human efforts to make it a sophisticated park. A woman's voiceover soliloquises the tropicalisation of this garden and the possibilities for fictions that she could create in this place. Parc Central, Taipei is a 9-minute looped video produced between 2000 and 2008. This third sequence makes explicit reference to the final scene of the film by Tsai Ming-Liang Vive l'Amour, shot in the same place, while it was under construction in 1994. The narrator's voiceover explains her approach: she has come to this park to find signs that will connect her to the heroine of the film. Its final scene is a fixed shot of her face, in tears, lasting 6 minutes 25 seconds. The narrator finds herself trapped in the park owing to incessant rain, which reminds her of May Lin's tears. These 3 experiences – whether they are real or fictional – are assembled like the pages of a personal diary, within a precise conceptual framework. They take place in public places loaded with history and references to architecture or cinema. The quote in French that Gonzalez-Foerster inscribed on the wall at the entrance to her display highlights her deep-rooted relationship with literature, from her first Chambres en Ville in the 1990s, through to her solo exhibition at the Tate Modern in London in 2008. “Having been a prison of literature for at least 2 years, caught up in a triangle consisting of Enrique Vila-Mata, Roberto Bolano and W.G. Sebald, 3 children of Robert Walser and J.L. Borges, it is impossible for me to present anything else here than these 3 short stories that can be seen and read in any order.” Laetitiia Rouiller
