Autre référence, Marie me fait découvrir le travail “True North”, d’Isaac Julien, un travail de ré-interprétation méditatif de l’aventure au grand nord de l’explorateur Matthew Henson. Le travail est un mélange de moments kitchs (à voir la thématique, je doute que ce soit voulu ?) et sublimes, un montage fragmenté grâce au split screens, qui me fait penser aux expérimentations que j’avais faites à Québec… À l’inverse de ce que nous voulons faire apparaître (la dérive des glaces), cette vidéo révèle la dérive des personnages face à l’immobilité des paysages glacés.
“True North, is meditative and comprises reflective images of the sublime, uses the landscape as a key location and theme. Loosely inspired by the story of the black American explorer, Matthew Henson (1866-1955) who accompanied Robert Peary and was one of the first people to reach the North Pole, later writing an account of his experience. In this fragmented narrative, Julien contemplates on ideas and histories of the hierarchical as well as in the struggling figure we find a succinct metaphor of endless traversing, symbolising the voyage of the modern that has to be experienced by others. The installation offers a fascinating new visual reading of space and time and its relation to counter histories. Here, the sublime moment of cognition of the image is presented to the mind which, in turn, can only comprehend the absolute of magnitude which itself defies conceptualisation. The installation contests binaries which are present in many notations of the expedition and of adventure that clutter the history of discovery- here reason, order and stability are replaced by irrational meanderings, symbolic gestures from shamanistic tropes and the constant seeping inertia of the ice. ”