Notre-Cam de Paris by Albert Figurt
The video-project is about how the increasing proliferation of digital cameras (or, more generally, optical devices) among ordinary people & the astonishing overlapping of the framing activity around specific spots, crossed with the visibility given to the photographer's choice by the LCD technology, can give birth to a peculiar visual panorama around the "target".
In a formula: proliferation of digital cameras with LCD preview-screen + the act of touristic framing = multifaceted & redundant postcard-ism (in famous public spots).
Contributions
About the AESTHETICS: I never show the rose on camera, focusing instead on how it is prismatically redistributed, spread, serialized on the LCDs all around: an astonishing iper-icon infoscape, a vivid allegory of our highly mediatized era (not necessarily invoking postmodernism, multitasking or window-based interfaces) precisely because of its centripetal nature, this miniscreen-cluster rings several bells: you may think of one of the founding short-stories of cyberpunk, “Fragments of a Hologram Rose” by William Gibson, where all the pieces of a broken laser photo contain the whole picture information / you can sense a Warholian deja-vu, considering that not every white balance in the house is calibrated with the same values (so you’re looking at slightly different replicas of the original silk screen) / and obviously - since we’re in a church - you can easily build a parallel with the Holy Communion, where the body of Christ is symbolically divided into smaller units and delivered to the believers: of course, according to the Eucharist ceremonial, all the wafers are equal; nevertheless, each of them has to be perceived and regarded as a precious and intimate gift - and that’s what happens here, where Catholic iconophilia meets transnational technological iconoconsumerism (note that a real mass is taking place in the church and, simultaneously, on its CCTV).
About the MUSIC: the soundtrack is based on two cantatas by Alessandro Scarlatti (1660?-1725): the first, “Bella Madre de Fiori” (literally “Beautiful Mother of Flowers”), is a profane one, celebrating Venus and love; the second, “Magnificat”, is a sacred one (frequently sung liturgically during Christian services), and contains an excerpt from the Gospel of Luke - where the Virgin Mary praises God. Although based on two opposite concepts of “ecstasy” and “emotional transport” (and specifically composed to be performed in different spaces / occasions) both the cantatas can describe the fascination for the big-colorful-window-rose : symbol of nature and fertility, sort of divine pupil, mesmerizing western mandala or esoteric map, it’s the centripetal element of the situation and of my mediated investigation.
