Swing High, Swing Low

2012-2014


Swing High, Swing Low is composed of some forty videos, all of which have been created from film excerpts figuring a swing. Encompassing a wide period of cinematic history – from the beginning of the 20th century to the 2010s – and works in which the swing’s presence may play a symbolic or an anecdotal role, the series uses this leitmotif as a pretext to propose an original rereading of the films approached, mainly directed by the effects of its swinging in space. While certain of the videos closely follow the logic of the object’s movement in order to introduce this process, others work to make more consequential rearrangements to the sequences in which it appears so as to prompt a more general reflection on the relationship to the Other and its attendant questions of desire and love as well as distrust, the feeling of abandonment, and madness.

Using accelerating and slowing effects on certain of the videos, occasionally distending the excerpts to their breaking point, the series makes special use of playing the film’s images and soundtrack back and forth, in reference to the leitmotif of the swing. Each video, however, follows its own logic depending on the narrative situation, thereby enabling the series to draw on a varied range of contrasting technical solutions.

Beyond advancing analyses of our contemporary social codes, the series also examines our flawed memories of the works and these same workstxt_quote_single_close propensity to reconstruct themselves in our imagination. Indeed, this series is as much about our capacity to return to known images as it is our memory’s resistance to the works that we experience and that move us. The swing transposes this movement of a film’s ability to live and reinvent itself within us.

Socializing with Neighbors
(2014)

42 swings and more
(2012)

Swing 38
(2012)

Swing 37
(2012)

Swing 36
(2012)

Swing 35
(2012)

Swing 34
(2012)

Swing 33
(2012)

Swing 32
(2012)

Swing 31
(2012)

Swing 30
(2012)

Swing 29
(2012)

Swing 28
(2012)

Swing 27
(2012)

Swing 26
(2012)

Swing 25
(2012)

Swing 24
(2012)

Swing 23
(2012)

Swing 22
(2012)

Swing 21
(2012)

Swing 20
(2012)

Swing 19
(2012)

Swing 18
(2012)

Swing 17
(2012)

Swing 16
(2012)

Swing 15
(2012)

Swing 14
(2012)

Swing 13
(2012)

Swing 12
(2012)

Swing 11
(2012)

Swing 10
(2012)

Swing 9
(2012)

Swing 8
(2012)

Swing 7
(2012)

Swing 6
(2012)

Swing 5
(2012)

Swing 4
(2012)

Swing 3
(2012)

Swing 2
(2012)

Swing 1
(2012)

Swing 0
(2012)

Witched
(2012)

Copyright © 2016 Laurent Fiévet