Alain Lefort
in Matapedia

“Since 2018, a large part of my experimentations has dealt with the phenomenal and temporal particularities of water and of aqueous spaces, as well as their impact in a given territory. The irregular and perpetual motion of water in all its forms pertains as much to its irreversibility in time as to its power and its mysteries. The works engendered are developed according to the specific properties of the medium used, whether photographic, on video or in sound, always considering the temporal dimension of the subject.

“In 2021 I carried on with these experiments from the banks of the St. Lawrence during a residency at Saint-Jean-Port-Joli. At that point the river is opaque, thick with the sediment that rises continually to the surface, in a constant movement dictated by the backwash. At the end of each day of my stay, I filmed the state of the water at my feet, and I was able to accumulate more than fifty films of a patch of the river. A tight framing of marine movements changing with the days and the tides. A river that will at times be calm, at others, turbulent. A tension sustained and established by the limits of the frame.

“The installation consists of the simultaneous and random screening of nine videos, presenting different space-times that pair up and respond to each other through the movement of the tide; an extension and an analogy of our collective wear and hesitations.

“More precisely, the screening begins with a piling up of films that, through a movement of centrifugal effect, move about and position themselves on a grid. Added to the installation is an entropic drive caused by the withdrawal of a fraction of a second with each visit of an excerpt to the first window of the grid; and the general motion will follow the rhythm of the degradation of the excerpts. This time gap creates a desynchronization in the excerpts. Thus, the more the work is shown, the closer it gets to an imminent and irreversible end.” – Alain Lefort