du soleil, que ça existe (of the sun, that it exists), 2024

black and white 16mm film

“du soleil, que ça existe” examines the temporalities of how the body forms, stores, and creates that which we translate as the real. Focusing on longing, distance, and language, this text-based project explores the expansiveness of language, as well of the expansiveness of landscape; by creating spaciousness in the dialogue and viewing landscapes as bodies. Due to obscuring and lightening veils on the images, the inability to perceive is experienced sometimes in almost-erased spaces, sometimes in velvety dark spaces, only revealing details through the flickering of solarization – a technique that involves flashing a source of light for a moment during the film’s development. The rhythm between light and darkness echoes movements of the sea, adding aqueous and sensuous layers to the film, where images seem to exist outside of the often-narrative space of cinema, becoming instead paintings or photographs in motion. The overall feeling of the installation is inspired by “The Malady of Death from Marguerite Duras” – in which she describes, at the end of the book, how a window overlooking a dark sea at night becomes a central element when her novel is adapted for a theatre play.