The Whistle and New Whistle series talk about gender, femininity, the place and status of women in society, and more specifically, on the international art scene.
It is also a question of subjectivity that defines an intimate relationship with oneself and its exposure or concealment of this dimension, or, a contrario, from the relation to an otherness that reveals various kinds of attentions intended both for the other as well as for the image or work of art and restores a vast panorama of behavior before this entity. This question of the functioning of our gaze and of the mechanisms involved in our perception, and more particularly with regard to the work of art constitutes the principle field of investigation of the artistic researches of Laurent Fiévet
The New Whistle series gathers today more than 140 video loops that revisit excerpts of films where are systematically represented a woman, a cage and a bird. It encompasses more than a century of film history, without distinction of genres, periods, geographies and the status of the films revisited and points out as such the evolution of the representation of women during this period
The series proceeds by collection and sets of variations that also have a reflexive dimension regarding the museum device and the approach of the collector. Independently, each of the montages is indeed likely to weave with the spectator the same kind of links that women with bird cages develop in films. In the context of an exhibition, they can be presented individually as well as invited to respond in forms of extremely varied combinations.
The installation 36 Songs to Whistle gathers 36 of these video loops on two screens in a cycle of more than 150 minutes. It functions by fractionation, rupture, confrontation and collision of the loops it gathers to put in perspective and invite to dialogue the periods, genres and situations exposed, and work on other forms of musicality specific to the video editing presented.
The installation received in Nice, in November 2018, the Prix de l’Hôtel Windsor as part of the Camera Camera Salon where it was presented to the public for the first time.
2 screens video installation
150 minutes.