Mètis

A meeting between friends, two sculptors: Vincent Barré and Richard Deacon. The studio: a space for producing sculptures and for conversation, and a frame assigned to the camera. But it’s also the camera that commands us to leave this studio, to open up to another archaic workspace at the foundry, to open to its darkness dotted by incandescence. And then, even more openness, in a backward movement, the filmed image goes back to the source of its sculpted shapes. Images as proof of their relation, the landscape and rites in the Mediterranean parade: Cistercian architecture in Provence, ancient Greek sites, Holy Week processions in Sicily. Slowly, reminiscence returns, accompanied by essential texts, Empedocles and Bataille, read by Françoise Lebrun. Then, what was supposed to be illuminated gets blurred, what was supposed to guide gets scattered. Instead of informing, form gets deformed. It’s no co-incidence that the name of Stalker, invented by Tarkovski for the joy of blurring the lines, gets to serve as a sign at the end. (Viennale)