Écluse (2009)

Video installation by Patrice Coulombe and Caroline Gagné

Caroline Gagné's site

This collaboration between Caroline Gagné and Patrice Coulombe is an exploration of the idea of transitory space exhibited through a video installation created from a sequence of images showing a boat entering a lock. It creates an illusory and metaphorical space instigated by an encounter between time and space, as they are interpreted by both our respective practices and research in sound and images.

In this installation, the close-up view of a boat hull entering a lock is projected in a film loop (approx. 10 minutes). On the left of the movie, the same film is projected with a different time frame of a few seconds. The visual effect created by this time difference shows us an immense ship that seems to exit the projection frame to enter into another. This process draws the spectator’s perception towards the limits of the image per se – its frame - as well as its deployment in time. The sound track enable the viewer to hear the sound of motors as they amplify and superpose themselves to the noise of water on the hull of the boat.

The audio-visual recording offers the possibility to witness a reversible temporality, as opposed to a time that would be irreversible, such as the time that we experience in reality. The reversible character of the projection video allows it to multiply at will and to transpose its temporality into space. In the same way, the boundaries of each frame is reinforced by the splitting in two, particularly in the space where it splits the two singular projections, this is the point at which the frame is crossed by the movement of the traveling boat.

Images: © P.Coulombe et C.Gagné 2008