Interview by Lilyana Karadjova
Christian Delécluse
Christian Delécluse is an artist and an architect living in Paris, France. He is Associate Professor at E.S.A. in Paris and lecturer at University Paris 8. He has developed a series of installations that question the physiological and psychological processes involved in the emergence of our perceptions. Inner Space is a light and sound installation that challenges the human perception. Operating at a very low level of light, it confronts the viewer to a mutating landscape that provokes ambiguous perceptual situations, switching between order and disorder, between determinism and chance, between mind control and letting go. Christian Delécluse is also interested in the social and human changes inspired by the digital revolution and the arousal of new paradigms like the “hacker” movement.
– Many contemporary artists work in the area of architecture, but it seems that fewer develop in the opposite way – from architecture to visual art. What is the story of your creative drive towards digital art?
In France many architects cross the lines between architecture and other practices. The education in architecture is very transdisciplinary, opened to many other disciplines including human sciences and arts. Architects have a strong focus on contemporary art, which is considered to be a major key to apprehend today’s society and the forces which control its evolutions.
But my story is a bit different as I studied architecture in Canada where the architectural education is more conservative and practice-based than it is in France. All I know is that my working life evolution has not followed a straight line moving from architecture to visual arts, but more a series of shifts back and forth between the two disciplines.
At the moment, I am working on an architectural project, as an artist, I am designing the building in collaboration with the architect. I like crossing the lines and see how it looks on the other side of the mirror.
What are the huge controversies and tensions in contemporary art in France?
This is not new, as the history of art shows many example of works like “L’origine du monde” from Gustave Courbet in 1966, that have been considered as shocking by part of the public.
But since a couple years, we are facing many public debate provoked, not only by the piece of art themselves, but by some overreactions from the public to this works, that may vary from violent criticisms and attacks on personal blogs to the vandalism of the works. The last example of this “trend” was Anish Kapoor “Dirty corner” that is exhibited on gardens of Palais de Versailles vandalized on September 5th with anti-Semitism graffiti. It is interesting to note that these reactions mainly arise from the pieces of art exhibited in the public space, that is a strong tendency at the moment.
How did you come to the decision to participate in DA Fest?
The first part of the process was mainly institutional. Le Cube, which is a structure dedicated to the production and promotion of digital art has presented a set of projects to the organizers of the DA Fest. Among those projects, they selected the installation Inner Space and the project Gulliver from Guillaume Baychelier. I was involved in this step, and in fact, not even aware of it. After this, I got officially invited to participate to the DA Fest, and the French Consulat decided to give financial support to the project.
But, more important, I understood that the DA Fest is an event supported by a few very energetic people who deeply want to offer the Bulgarian public the opportunity to experiment some pieces they would never see otherwise.
Did you get an impression of something specific about art in Bulgaria?
My first impression was that some of the pieces presented invoked a sense of humor maybe specific to Bulgarian people, that I felt a bit similar to the British one. Also I had the feeling that the relation with iconic symbols was quite important, where French contemporary art tend to be iconoclast and mainly conceptual.
Inner Space is a major work, what inspired you to start working on it?
Inner Space is born in 2010 during the long conversations I had with Muriel Romero, who is a contemporary dance choreographer living in Madrid, about the invention of a stage lighting device that would interact with the body of a dancer on stage through modification of his/her space perception. The project quickly evolved into an art installation, but it kept from this early stage a very deep relation with the body and the space, and the idea of transforming the space perception using animated light system, as well as a performative logic. The project was influenced by the minimalists and kinetic art, but also by a series of sculptures by Giaccometti that challenges the perception of the viewer, and more deeply by a series of research about embodied perception, a corpus of theoretical claims postulating that the body, its movements, and the interaction with the environment fundamentally shape people’s perception of the world. I remember someone telling me that Inner Space is a train in movement, so very precise and complex objects, which is unexpected since the work is rather abstract and minimal. But in fact most comments from the public are very surprising because they express the subjectivity of the person.
How did you choose the set of „situations of perception“ in Inner Space – states, feelings and emotions?
Inner Space is an instrument of space construction. The composition intention was not to define clear situations of perception where all people would feel the same feelings and emotions, but in contrary, to built a series of ambiguous situations that create perception shifts for the viewer, ie moments where his/her perception of the world suddenly shift from one interpretation to another that is radically different. A basic example of these phenomena is the famous „rabbit duck“ illusion where a low detailed image without background can be interpreted by the viewer both as a rabbit or as a duck, depending on the person and on the moment. I also played with the way perception operate on an unconscious level, like the tendency we have to interpret any random alignment as a voluntary organized shaped, to shift between ordered and chaotic shapes, building a space where the viewer will project his/her own subjectivity.
Is there a model for „reality check“ in Inner Space?
Perception is an active process. The people have to be voluntary involved. They have to accept to „let go“ in order to get „immersed“ and fully live the experience. Some people choose not to be available for the experience. this is their choice. In a museum you are always free to walk in front of a painting and not look at it. I choose this kind of immersion, that preserves the freedom of the audience. Some artists, especially in digital arts, make different decision. They augment the intensity of the stimuli so that it becomes very hard for the audience to avoid the experience. One of the most extreme example is probably the performance „feed“ by Kurt Hentschlager, where a very intense stroboscopic light is pulsed inside a room that create visual hallucinations. the light is so bright that the only way so can stop the phenomena is by closing your eyes and cover them with your hands (the light goes through the eyelid). For the purpose I am following with this work, I wanted a very low level of stimulation. So that it is also demanding but on another aspect. It takes 5 to 10 min for the public to adapt to the darkness and start experiencing fully the installation. It is his responsibility not to get distracted by his cell phone or by the light of someone watching his watch. In that sense, this work is very intimate and fragile.
How would you interpret the visual concepts of consciousness – as an empty white box or as a defined black box?
I guess there is a little bit of both. The empty white box refers to a supposed empty space ready to host any incoming sensation. But in fact, we could relate this situation to the one of the writer in front of a white page, and Gilles Deleuze has written a beautiful text that reverses this argument. In this text, he states that a white page is never empty. It is full of all the texts we have read before, full of all our thoughts and of our history that is always present in ourselves and control the way we relate to the world.
The defined black box is maybe a more plastic object than the white box. Black is the most versatile color. Pure black never exist, as many painters have experimented. Some artists, like Frederic de Wilde, experiment in finding a pure black substance, using nano particules of carbons that are supposed to reflect absolutely no light at all. But we know that in contrary, black is very sensitive to light and colors. As soon as a light touches the black, it is reflected and its color is amplified. So as much as a white box is never empty, a black box can never be really precisely defined. It is always subject to change according to the external context.
Are there hidden or obscure themes in digital arts, that may be scary in a sense close to fantastic horror?
Probably all pieces of work contain an obscure part but in digital arts this is taken really seriously and literally as most of the pieces are shown in dark spaces. The reason is often technical, the public see better the light pieces in the dark, so you can use less expensive equipment, especially in the case of videoprojection. But there is also an esthetic reason being that. The night is the territory of the underground life, opened to transgression and fantasy.
What are the major goals of the Hacker culture in digital arts?
If we define digital arts as the integration of electronics or digital tools within arts projects, I understand digital arts not as a new artistic media but rather as a movement that uses new technologies to „hack“ the different artistic disciplines, like music, performance, installations, video, etc. I use the word „hack“ because hacking is not about replacing a system by a new one, like would a revolution do, but rather to infiltrate a system and make it evolve from inside. So it is about renewal of perception on traditional objects more than inventing new objects.
„Inner space“ by Christian Delécluse, light and sound installation.
„Inner space“ by Christian Delécluse, light and sound installation.
„Inner space“ by Christian Delécluse, light and sound installation.
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