Eric MUTEL « In Cryo Video »

Video Installation. 3D relief. 2006. Relative duration, Loop. (3 videos of different duration, 38min, 32min, 25min, desynchronised) 3 LCD screens, variable space.

Introduction. This work is more a result of a programmed video editing work, but make a connection between argentic or analogic photographs, and so media, to a video kind animation and digital work and display. One of the main subject being also about images, support, and representation, and especially its loss and destruction, through analogic process, but recorded and edited as digital, and display digitally, it make a relation between analogic images and digital or electronic images, in their dissapearance, or virtuallity. The visual result seems to be an effect or electronically made like, as if it would have been a software or computer process which would have affect those images. But the process on images, beside the 3D, is totally analogic, melting process of frozen liquid emulsion photo print into iceblocks. It could be taken, beside other subjects, as a kind of "mise en abîmes" of digital world, process, media, images, or a metaphore of dissapearance or loss through technologies. This line of subject approach is not closed, and, in my point of view, this work is bringing together many possible others subjects, many inspirations and influences sources, which brought me to this realisation and allow many possibles outcomes and perceptions.

It has been realised for exhibition Panorama7, in France, produced by Le Fresnoy, Studio national, in Tourcoing, FRANCE. http://www.panorama7.net http://www.lefresnoy.net

This work is, in his original form, a project for Video Installation, displayed in a dark space, 6m x 4,5m x 3m (with access corridor. It has a version for eliptic / spiral space) run by 3 computers, for 3 LCD screen of size 20" and Resolution 1600x1200, 90° clockwise rotated and suspended in the dark space and for 3D relief viewing. 2006. It has a relative duration since it is about 3 differents videos, 38min, 32min, and 25min, which are looped and will desynchronise through time.

Description This specific work and my works in general often plays on obsessions, complexity, improbability, experimentation, processes, contradictions, materials and supports. It is empirical, inviting error, accident, fragility, the organic, the mineral, and light. These approaches involve imagery, representation, the senses, and the body. The project is also a vehicle, in my view, for issues to do with science, biology, geology, the environment, humankind, time and icons. My work’s sources and perspectives are notions of limits, spaces, cycles, conservations, collections, losses, destructions, of life and death. My work lies outside any determined subject and paradoxically leads me, while exaggerating or using fixity, towards research and an approach or idea of movement – an absolute if ever there was one.

This work, based on photographic instants and matters – fixed, frozen, preserved memories – is an attempt to set them in motion, in depth or volume, in becoming. Change in physical states, media in conflicting relations, confrontation of materials and processes, this proposal into artistic experimentation became in equal parts a field of inquiry into the science, biology, and geology of the image, a test tube for video matter, an experimentation into the life and loss of the image. Photography, medium of the frozen memory, is treated here as an organic, aqueous, ephemeral, living material, handled like a skin, affected by ice, a living memory, a resisting, uncontrollable material, a space of imperceptible movement. Threatened, fragilized, photography is frozen in ice, destroyed but hyper-preserved, it becomes the raw material of its own evolution and disappearance as it takes part in the thaw of its backing. From the analogical and organic images, through their frozen liquid material, digital and video virtualities are projected. This work on time, in which the disappearance of image coincides with the recording of images, is an inquiry about three portraits that are set in motion and placed face to face, synchronizing and desynchronizing the times, the internal motions of and in between each image.

Image 3D, extract from one of the video.

Other view, communication image.

Visuals In Situ As it is most of the time, here in its rectangulaire shape/view (which is als relativly about same view In Situ when in the spiral space, but external view and circulation audience is different)

Technical Details / Process

Like the videos, these photographs are the product of apparatuses and processes using objects and substances, which, in my opinion, are both tools and vectors for meaning and the sensory. In a way, the starting point is very much an urge to put the image at risk, an urge to destroy the image – maybe in order to begin again, reconstruct and discover: pointlessness of the image, ascendancy of the image, permanence, ephemerality… The first generations of images – studio portraits – serve as a matrix for liquid emulsion prints, thus producing a second generation of images. These are then transferred onto/into blocks of ice. This requires a certain set of preconditions: the quality of the ice, the state of its surfaces and the temperature of the ice and the air, which fluctuates between -5° C and -20° C. Surprises, accidents and errors often occur in line with one or other of the parameters of the process. I then obtain a third generation of images. The follow-up calls for a sub-zero studio, and this entails various problems of parameter control and stability. Then comes the paradox of causing the images to melt in sub-zero temperatures while controlling the way ice and image affect each other; this is done by using energy, heat, and the UV rays in light and bringing a kind of greenhouse effect to bear on the image. According to its variation in density the image captures the heat of the natural or artificial lighting and causes the ice – its support – to melt, at the same time sculpting the shape of the portrait it embodies. Being liquid emulsion prints, the frozen images behave like an organic system, soaking up water and air and reacting to light, cold and the atmosphere. They are malleable and can stretch, take in water, re-freeze, crack, dry, shrink, and expand. It must be remembered that by their very nature, and because of the initial stage of being frozen in the ice, these images are structurally destroyed, but at the same time preserved and set. Via the melting effect, mirror, light, transparency, sculpture, one obtains from a 2D image, multiple 3D images, volumes and modellings, all of then tending to disappear. This is, then, a laboratory: an in vitro – or even in vivo – experimenting with these melted cyogenic images. The project involved three portraits rotated through 360° in 25 separate stages, this called for some 80 liquid emulsion prints, 80 blocks of ice, and 80 meltdowns. Based on an analogue process, the following stage paradoxically requires the image-by-image recording of the meltdowns and losses with two synchronised digital cameras. The ultimate goal is a video installation for 3 screens, with 25 3D relief sequences per screen. These video sequences are the outcomme of 6-10 hours of melting, and comprise 1,500-3,000 photos. In its totality the work added up material base of some 150,000 images, which, in video postproduction, provided 2,000 Go of base data. Used here for the videos, 3D relief allows the transcription of a volume aspect and an aqueous, moist, organic, mineral, crystalline, transparent and luminous aspect. The presentation in a totally dark space also causes a loss of spatial bearing and reference points in respect of volumes in a state of levitation, transformation and loss.

Video web links: Please visit the website/blog for other visuals, and extracts/samples of video, or short visit in the installation : http://www.ericmutel.com direct link to page of video installation: http://eric.mutel1.free.fr/index.php?2006/06/27/12-in-cryo-video in exhibition in Arles: http://eric.mutel1.free.fr/index.php?2007/07/03/1-first-post links to videos extracts: Demo : http://eric.mutel1.free.fr/projets/video/icvdemo.mov Sample 3D : http://eric.mutel1.free.fr/projets/video/icv1sample.mov

Few notes in press or communication festival, about this work (in French):

Festival Rencontres d’Arles 2007 : “(…) une installation vidéo, basée sur ses travaux photographiques. Son travail est source d’expérimentations sur l’erreur, la fragilité, l’image, le sensible, le corps. À partir de matières photographiques, Eric Mutel tente une mise en mouvement et en relief de l’image, telle une expérimentation de vie ou de perte. Le support photographique est mis à mal, traité comme une peau. Mutel contraint ainsi les images à l’épreuve de la glace, en les gelant, il les détruit tout en les conservant. Cette manipulation lui permet de projeter des images surprenantes, fixées dans leur support liquide gelé, où se mêlent disparition et captation.”

Festival Temps D’images 2006 : « Une fonte de glace écrite comme une brûlure, une disparition comme un dépérissement, usure aqueuse de portraits, bris de mémoire pris dans la glace. »

Newspapers « Libération », 29/06/06 « (…) cette génération a grandi avec les technologies mais interroge en creux l'hystérie informationnelle, la virtualisation du réel et la mémoire qui s'effiloche. (….) des portraits photo fragiles, tirés sur la glace, qui se désagrègent, gondolent, se liquéfient jusqu'à la disparition de l'image (In Cry Video d'Eric Mutel)... »

Credits Realisation / Direction / Artist : Producer in charge: Assistant visual arts: Adviser, 3D relief :

Eric MUTEL Alexandra DUFAUX. Florine MASSON. Alain DEROBE

Production Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains – Tourcoing. Copyright ©Eric MUTEL – Le Fresnoy - 2006 – All rights reserved. With the support of : - Interactive Institute in Sweden, Studio Qlife in Umeå, (http://www.tii.se/qlife) - Icehotel, Sweden, (http://www.icehotel.com) - French institut in Stockholm, French Embassy in Sweden, (http://www.ambafrance-se.org) Thanks to: Sami theatre in Kiruna (http://www.samiteahter.org), Perrine, Bénèdicte, Michela, and all the staff of Le Fresnoy.

Infos Distribution This Installation has been produced by Le Fresnoy, (http://lefresnoy.net/), Studio National des Arts Contemporains. Some part were realised at le Fresnoy and others at differents locations in Sweden, in 2005/2006. The premiere displayed happened in Panorama7 exhibition, (http://panorama7.net/), at Le Fresnoy, In June 2006, and has been also showned at Temps d’Images Festival, at the Ferme du Buisson, in France, in Octobre 2006. (http://www.tempsdimages.org/archives/tdi2006/france/index.html). This work, with new photographic variation, has been nominated and programmed for the discovery awards exhibition at Les Rencontres d’Arles 2007. (http://www.rencontres-arles.com/)

Logos Support/Partners

Short technical details For more information, look over the technical sheets and technicals map below. Panorama7 exhibition Version, at the Fresnoy Studio, in June 2006 : 3 LCD screens, 20’’, suspended. Runs by 3 desynchronized computers Depending on exhibition dates, some equipment could be loaned from the Studio Le Fresnoy, otherwise, festival or organiser shall provide it. Black box space, differents variations : -Rectangular space, black box 6m x 4,5m x 3m with acces corridor. (4,5m x 4,5m x 3m internal space). This is also possible with stage black curtain if construction of black box seems complicated. In the case of build space, it could be adaptated to already existing rooms, or using part of walls existing. -Space in 1 or 2 Spirals of 20m long, on a slightly bigger surface, between 7,5m x 6m or 10m x 8m. Videos in 3D relief, viewing glasses of 3D color anaglyphes. It is possible to think different space for display or exhibition of this video installation. Either variations of space depending of the technical possibilities, or depending the possible space available, either a variations as a quite complete new proposal of this work, from this video materials ( projections…live perf…)

Technical list, required equipment Eventual possible lending from Le Fresnoy studio, depending on period and lending agreement, otherwise, host shall provide equipement.

Technical map, top view, in the original rectangular shape version.

Technical map, cables, top view, in the original rectangular shape version.

Technical map, side or cut view, in the original rectangular shape version.

Some designs / Plans, Options in the Spiral space display (here are visuals that were planned for the exhibition during Les Rencontres d’Arles en 2007. It was here accompagnied by new photographic variations prints on the outside, inside the spiral was the video installation) -First option, 1 spiral :

- Second options : 2 spirals, one in the other, more possibilities and ways for circulation of the audience.

Visuals In situ. External view of the black space/box, here in the Spiral shape. New variation and version, realised for the discovery awards exhibition at photo festival Les rencontres d’Arles, summer 2007. (for the exhibition, the external side of the spiral was used to display some photo variations, while the video installation was inside the black space of the Spiral).

Contacts Artist / Direction / Realisation / Technics : Eric Mutel Emails : [email protected] [email protected] Internet : http://www.ericmutel.com Phone Finland: +358 50 501 45 29

Production : Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains. www.panorama7.net www.lefresnoy.net Distribution : Natalia Trebik, [email protected]