BUT WHERE IS THE TWENTY-FIFTH HOUR?

 

 

MEETING

 

I met Dimension Emotionnelle on a ship.

But at the dock.

I don't really know yet whether this detail is of any importance, except that it seems to me at first glance that these clues of a minute nature are their markers, in what seems to me to be the beginning of an investigation - a form that seemed appropriate to their approach.

 

APPROACH

 

She told me about their approach.

Her, because that day, she was alone at the meeting.

Their approach?

Slow, nonchalant, swaying, precise, but aimless.

A walk or a drift? A stroll or a wander? Walserian or situationist?

"Stalker," she said, but very quickly, as if the reference was too heavy, or not quite adjusted, or already worn out by others. Or that it lacked a dimension: that of meeting rooms, deserted areas to explore but only at night, because during the day the offices are busy. Too much romance, too: the stalker here is a bit derisory, in the French version. Only the zone resonates, because it's multiple: the zone is the urban zone, the industrial zone, the commercial zone, and also the zone. It's a bit as if we've removed the grain from the film, and we're on the set, with some guys who've activated the smoke machine and others who are taking their break because it's time.

What she gave me as a story was not a wander through uncharted territory, no Antarctica, no pristine snow, no desert either. Not even industrial. Not even in dreams. No, just going outside, and if it's dark, it's just because at the time the decision to go outside was made, it was dark.

 

TERRITORIES, EXPERIENCES AND PROTOCOLS

 

It's dark, they decide to leave their territory. Leave the docks.  Walk on the black, shiny asphalt? Searching? Find objects.

They, because they are multiple, in their configuration, and we are in France.

Lyon, a few months later. Confluence district, confluence zone. Looking? Find "the last vacant lot", before the renovation works.

What were they doing there? The opposite of the step on the Moon: to be the last to tread the ground of the last vacant lot in the process of disappearing. Collecting objects - again - as relics and clues, without nostalgia, since they will then simply go to the offices that have been built and propose their project with demonstration panels and badges. Adaptability.

Between two territories, from the exploration of the surroundings of a work space to the exhibition space, brainstormings, tests, self-hypnosis sessions, experiments and productions will have taken place.

I have the intuition that they first apply to themselves what they then implement as protocols. With the guarantee included that the limits will not be exceeded. They don't seem radical - not post-punk, but in fact,

no hint of aesthetics either. They don't cross the line, they don't cross the border. They're in-between. In the interstices, border areas, transient spaces, unoccupied places, ghost stations (but of those described on a poster of the previous station, ghost in the open).

When I think back to her and me on this boat at dock, it seems to me of this order: neither on land nor on sea, between two spaces: logic of an Emotional Dimension.

 

PRESENCE OF THE FUTURE or OTHERWISE AND TOMORROW

 

Between two spaces but also between two times, in a temporal zone that articulates past and future, with play, precisely, as if the gear wheels that fit this one into this one had play: the present one.

What their projects implement, almost in spite of the finesse of the past/future interlocking, is precisely the present.

"What will tomorrow be made of? "they say.

Yes, it is a question of "making tomorrow", of making the future, not just of attending, participating in or projecting it.

From the Somniloquie du Perroquet to Fantasmata, no retrofuturism at work: it is not a vision of the present that looks at the visions of the future of the past, but truly a vision of the present that looks at the vision that the future would have of the said present.

Have you seen the movie? But what year are you in?

We've known for a few years now that we no longer have any plans for the future, as was the case during the period when the notion of "progress" was in force. Deprived of future projections, we would be deprived of a future. "No future, then? Already taken. In reality, it is only the obsolete notion of progress that is abandoned on the road. The present is enough: it is what creates the conditions for the appearance of the future.

 

SERIAL OBJECTS AND HUMANS

 

There is no need either to bring out the great game, the great technological, digital means - even if they are used: good old analog means are in order, or even, more simply, biological means. What could be better than humans? But humans in the present: specialists. On the other side of the glass: spectator-scientist behind the glass observing other scientists or spectator-cobey of an experiment, voluntary participant or not, visualiser or visionary, vector and reader. Our seats are moving and absolutely participate in the construction of their trophic chain. At the origin of which there is: the objects. These objects on which they first set their gaze, which they collect and integrate into protocols that produce images, stories, films, installations, are not insignificant. They are at the heart of a reactor, like a fuel: first scene in Back to the Future II, where "Doc" introduces waste into the DeLorean's tank before the stunned eyes of "Marty-from-present" who cannot imagine that in the future, plutonium could so easily be replaced by old Orangina and mandarin peels.

In the trophic chain of DE, humans are a link that both follows and precedes objects. Which are not just any objects but those found on the ground, debris, left behind by someone, after having been produced by others. After these objects have been picked up, they are then reintroduced into a narrative-producing process by humans, the specialists. Here any episode of the CSI series works, where each character produces, from evidence, small stories that feed into a large story reconstructing the crime; the interpretation is segmented and grappling with objects.

Guides careful to the slightest scrap, to the smallest detail, DE knows that what lies in the gutter is neither god nor devil, but "something" that is a hybrid between reality and its interpretation by a group of humans.

 

REVERSAL OF SITUATION

 

Spirit? Magic? Hypnosis? Shaman? Science fiction ?

Invocation of a spirit: that of the company.

Modern magic, the name of a chain store.

Hypnosis seminar instead of a session.

Shaman, registered trademark.

Entreprise rather than Enterprise.

 

BACK TO THE TERRITORIES

 

Their names are the best clue as to what territories they would actually like to clear.

 

 

Lidwine Prolonge

 

2015