2011 - 2014
Generative video, infinite length
Arte Laguna Virtual Art Prize 2014
Contemporary talent Prize 2011 François Schneider Foundation

Dérives (Drifts) is an infinite film composed of thousands of short cinematographic extracts, each one picturing water differently. The editing of these sequences offers to the spectator an entirely new film in which water becomes the main subject in addition to a journey through its history in the cinema: from The Waterer Watered by frères Lumière (1895) to Point Break by Kathryn Bigelow (1991) through Stalker by Andrei Tarkovski (1979).
«You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you» according to Heraclitus. Water changes of shape and moves incessantly. It is a type from which everything can rise. This is the reason why Dérives proposes an innovating approach of the narrative thanks to an infinite automatic editing system. Each chosen sequence had first been commented according to different criteria such as year of release, typology (violent water, calm water, loving water according to the distinction of Gaston Bachelard) or degree of intensity.
In exploiting these data, a soft indefinitely pictures these micro-sequences in real time and pertinently link them up through different stylistic processes (ruptures, contrasts, crescendos.). This fluctuating editing conveys meaning hence offering a cinematographic experience always renewed : a kind of meta-narration.
What is to be seen is water playing a calming, terrifying or maternal role (and so ever) in turn, by subtly alternating different dramatic degrees. Water becomes an independent feature of the plot no longer used as a picturesque background; being both realistic and symbolic, an omnipotent and polymorphic entity: protective, majestic and terrible. Water transcends and gets rid of the films that picture it in putting actors down.
Renewing the tradition of the Found Footage with an original approach of editing, Dérives proposes a space of dialogue between water and cinematographic art: two powerful vehicles for imagination and mirrors of reality.

Read "Reading a Wave", text by Douglas Edric Stanley (catalogue #23 of 22,48 m² editions)