This video, produced not long before his death, stages Absalon fighting continuously and to the point of exhaustion against invisible forces. The camera is installed in a single position and shows the artist, dressed in a white shirt and black trousers, fighting and struggling against his own shadow. He gets down on his knees, then slides, gets up and turns around, looking for “the enemy”.

In a manner similar to the deliberate looping of the video, his movements are circular, without beginning or end, and endlessly repeated. In a systematic and obsessional manner, Absalon literally goes in circles. He doesn't find any answers. A tension sets in, but is never resolved.
The fixed camera delimits a frame that defines the scene represented. The artist is therefore shown in the dual enclosure of the frame and of one of his white cells. Bataille evokes the restricting nature of the spaces designed by Absalon. His gestures recall those of a prisoner, battling into the void, against himself, as he moves within this narrow, confined cell, provoking a sense of claustrophobia. As Absalon himself affirmed: “I am trying to create an infallible system, which in a certain sense is a total prison.”

Bataille also plays out a kind of metaphorical proposition that places the artist at the core of its creative process. He finds himself grappling with the paradoxical ideas caused by these habitation cells that he built himself. These antinomic notions oscillate between private/public, rational/irrational, nomadism/sedentarism, and comfort/discomfort. As in his spaces of restricted freedom, Absalon fights to gain control of a situation that persistently escapes him.

Cristina Ricupero