Damien Troadec

damientroadec.hotglue.me

Thesis: Bruised Grounds

 

Bruised Grounds

The landscape… Barking rabid dogs, collapsing surveillances camera, defunct military tools, missing calls and resting monsters.

Issued, rescued. From afar I see sparkling and rusted structures that trigger me. Are they meant to play or to train ? I am getting closer to them. It is indeed hard to breathe, but maybe that is the price to pay in order to have a proper look. What is it about that connection that frightens me ? As well as the question raised by the space of the playground regarding memory, safety, brutality, endurance and survival. It is about physical and psychological development in dark times, about hope in turmoil. Images. Nestled in blurred movements and in overexposed pixels. Between the surveillance camera and the weapon’s sight, between the fictional exchange and the revolted voices. Images, images, images. Yet, is it about the violence of pictures, or the one that is portrayed ? Arguably, controversial and other troubles are solidified and upgraded by the act of representation. It is indeed about in-between structures, half content and half context. From afar it appears as a fine and single line but when I stare at it carefully layers reveal themselves. Parallel ones. Destructive ones. Let us merge with that borderline vision. It is a camera with two lenses, situated on the same side but that produces opposite images.

« Bruised Grounds » is based on an interweaving of experiences, interpretations and affections. It aims to build up a constellation of views regarding strength, passivity and illumination. From its etymology, constellation is explained as a group of stars that draws a figure on the celestial vault that people’s imaginations believe to recognise. This idea of creating connections of meanings that would dress mental and fictive, yet parallel worlds, stories and meanings is a key point of the installation. Half coalition, half disappearance.

The only remain… a suffocating but optimistic scream.