© Videonale e.V.
* 1981 and 1980, live and work in Paris FRA
Studied at École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs Paris FRA and Le Fresnoy, Tourcoing FRA
Exhibitions [selection]:
2014 Prospectif Cinéma, Cinéma 1, Centre Pompidou, Paris, FRA
The Unmanned, CIAP, Ile de Vassivière, FRA
The Unmanned, VOX – Centre de l’image contemporaine, Montréal, CAN
The Unmanned, Casino Luxembourg, LUX
2013 I Look To You And I See Nothing, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE
Beam in Thine Own Eye, MONA, Hobart, Tasmanie, AUS
Fabien Giraud & Raphaël Siboni, Hors-Pistes festival, Centre Pompidou, Paris, FRA
2010 Repetition ISLand, Centre Pompidou, Paris, FRA
La Condition I Le Barrage, Galerie Loevenbruck, Paris, FRA
Dynasty, Palais de Tokyo – Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, FRA
From a distance nothing but a white tent in the lonely heights. Inside it, the remains of the Temple of Apollo Epikourios near Bassae in the Western Peloponnese. The cryptic doubling in the title of the video work refers to the original model, Jean-Daniel Pollet’s film BASSAE. This was made in 1964 and documents the then free-standing temple on film. Fabien Giraud and Raphaël Siboni have restaged Pollet’s film with a high degree of accuracy but without his speaking voice in the off. The temple, situated in the midst of the Arcadian mountains and encased in a protective tent since 1987, is always shown in a long shot, from dawn to dusk in the course of a day. A white tent seen from afar in changing light, accompanied by the sounds of nature, birdsong and the sighing of the wind. It is visibly hidden, isolated from the beauty of the wide landscape. Cross-cuts into the inside of the tent keep bringing it close to us again and again. The camera glides effortlessly through the relic of the past. Calm and supple. Close to the floor slabs, along pillars, flutes, their cracks and fissures. The camera documents, scans, touches carefully, sidles through the rows of pillars. One can almost feel the stone. Droning. Muffled rumbling. Mystical booming. What has been lost appears under a white cover. The tent fabric protects the stone and is itself already a monument in need of protection. Once a place for praying, now there is digging and restoring. Was. The building site is abandoned. The living are laying themselves to rest. And how are the gods?
Kollektiv