Metaphor of the Iraq's war: the fish is watching, powerless, the star invading its territory (the bottle) following allegations this one could hide thousands of liters of anthrax (weapons of mass destruction).
Two soundtracks :
- In a February 2003 speech to the U.N. Security Council, Colin Powell alleged that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction (thousands of litres of Anthrax). However, after the U.S. had invaded Iraq, no weapons of mass destruction were found.
- In April 2017, the bolivian Ambassador to the United Nations, Sacha Llorenti, reminded the council of the disastrous weapons of mass destruction lie peddled by the US as a pretext to invade Iraq : “After this invasion, there was 1 million deaths".
SECRET, LIE AND DEATHS
Black/White and color - 2 min - 2017 - Sound Track - this video is part of SECRET, the video-composition of the FemLink-Art Collective
Teenagers and young women are still constrained to marry a man they neither choose, nor even met. The first part of the video shows a bride on balancing on a wire, reflecting her uncertain future. It's her personnal Crossing Over. Her fall is the symbol of all these married women that enter into this life of submission and abuses.
The second part of the video examines the protests of these women against violence, and their struggle for their rights.
The Conservative rejects their claims as a Western theory whose Universalist pretentions reflects an ethnocentric prejudice.
In our own societies, we saw actions against the dignity of women and their liberty becoming acceptable in front of the occidental courts: lay judges did not dare to condemn these barbarians’ practices against women because of a biased understanding of the concept of multiculturalism.
From the daughter of a men to the spouse of another, the subordinate and inferior position of women goes against all our laws.
Original Score by: Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
WOMAN versus WOMEN
Black/White - 2014 - 2 min - Sound Track - this video is part of FEMALE, the video-composition of the FemLink-Art Collective
"Le bien, disait Aristote au livre I de l’Éthique à Nicomaque, est ce vers quoi toute chose tend". Dans la vidéo "Philosophie du Verbe", Véronique Sapin joue avec ce verbe "tendre" en l'utilisant dans sa dimension concrète et physique: sur l'image, une corde est à tendre. Lorsqu'elle est tendue, la corde y symbolise l'équilibre, le juste, le bien. Tendue, comme la corde d'un arc ou celle d'un instrument de musique pour jouer juste, elle peut aider à conserver ou conquérir le bien. Pour continuer à se tendre, la corde sur la vidéo a besoin de l'effort continuel de chacune. Sur l'image, ce sont des femmes qui tiennent et contrôlent la corde. Toutes ont un rôle a jouer pour qu'elle reste tendue. La vidéo est une métaphore de la nécessaire lutte constante contre les atteintes à l'intégrité physique et aux droits des femmes.
Véronique Sapin métaphorise ainsi ce que Hannah Arendt appelle «·l'agir-ensemble·»: agir est une responsabilité, le contraire de la résignation : dire non, refuser, être capable de s’indigner…
La succession des verbes d'action qui martèlent l'image de la vidéo, entre en écho avec la réfléxion de la philosophe selon laquelle, l’action et la parole sont étroitement liées. La vidéo expose le fait que du rassemblement des personnes naît la puissance politique qui «·jaillit parmi des êtres-humains lorsqu’ils agissent ensemble, et retombe dès qu’ils se dispersent·».
Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
VERBS FOR PHILOSOPHY
Black/White - 5 min - 2016 - Sound Track - Original Score by: Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
VIDEOS
In a landscape of war which is reduced to unstable bitmap display, the thirst of the Dove is a metaphor to the impossible mankind's thirst of peace.
THIRSTING FOR DOVE
Black/White - 2014 - 2 min - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
The video speaks about one of these acts which drive humanity to regress towards the animal: the acid attack
The acid attack is a crime with a marked gender skew. Women and girls are victims in 75-80% of cases. Of the female victims, about 30% are under 18.
1,500 cases are recorded around the world every year. However that is likely to be massively underreported. Most victims are fearful to report it to the police for fear of reprisal. The acid attacks are increasing.
My name is Human Being. I have the right to choose everything in my life; just like you; because it's only natural. ISN' T IT ? That's why I am turning my face towards you with complete confidence.
This is the way we imagine what should be the highest shape of the relations between the human beings. We are still far from this ideal.
I AM TURNING MY FACE TOWARD YOU
Black/White - 2014 - 5'25 - Sound Track in french and english - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
Living for the respect of human rights and dying because of this commitment... Its what happened to these women. We are concerned by the murders of these persons. We have to fight against them forgets because the memory is a weapon in front of the inhumanity. This video is an act of resistance.
We have a duty of remembrance towards the persons who were murdered because of their involvement to the human rights defense. This video speaks about some women who lost their life because they were women's rights defenders. The list is unfortunatly incomplete.
ERASED WOMEN
Black/White and color - 2013 - 6min - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
The Parisian dandy, Bernard Henry Levy faced strong rebuttals from noted intellectuals because of his lack of rigour and its caricatural depictions of troubled zones during wartime. The most common accusation towards Lévy is of him being one-sided and shallow as a thinker. Gilles Deleuze called Lévy's methods "vile"; and Vidal-Naquet wrote: "BHL's intellectual dishonesty is properly unfathomable".
However, although widely ridiculed, his influence persists.
"I was... I was also... I am... I think... I know... What I saw with my eyes... for moral values... I advocated for military action... it's a a real progress in civilisation...Believe me, believe me..."
The french flashy and media star philosopher, Bernard Henry Levy is explaining that his thought is inspired on what he sees "with his eyes". Because what he sees is inevitably The Truth, he indicates us who are the goodies and the baddies. For moral values, the only thing to do is to bomb the baddies... The kind of profound thoughts that the medias like.
Extracted images from "Head to Head", program from Al-Jazeera TV - 2013 - June 8th
THE TOURIST (Bernard Henri Levy)
Black/White and color - 2012 - 2min - Sound Track - this video is part of PROTEST, the video-composition of the FemLink-Art Collective
A video in three deaths which raises the question of the image's status: from the one who takes the images to the one who shows them.
1st death: an aint which meets a cocroach in the agony. It is interested in the cocroach's death but this one is hangs on to its life.
2nd died: the ant clocked by its booty meets a human foot. The ant is interested in its own life but the foot hangs on it.
3nd died: a youg woman, Doa Khalil Aswad is put to death in front of our eyes by men who consider she dishonored her family. These images of "honor killing", visible in Youtube in a report of CNN, come from a mobile phone of a witness. However despicable they are, these images exist. Véronique Sapin is the witness of the withness. Several questions appears: how ordinary men can took the life and dead power on an other human-being; Why this man has filmed the murder ? why he has places these images on You Tube ? Who is the animal ?
IMAGE, ANIMAL, IMAGE (Live - Die - Testify)
Black/White - 2011 - 4min - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
With her video, The Battle of Naked Men, Veronique Sapin moves her work on human vulnerability from a philosophical field toward a more political dimension.
This is not a battle : men are lined up and a child is sleeping.
There are no naked men : men are in uniform and the sleeping child is wearing a torn T-shirt.
However, social violence is extremly strong in the images. What do these men at attention in a street where a dirtychild in rags and tatters is sleeping on the ground, at their feet ?
The battle is announced. It is inevitable
THE BATTLE OF NAKED MEN
Black/White - 2010 - 3'42 - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
Solidarity will be the last reason for hope for humankind.
Two little girls are sitting on the ground in the middle of other children. One is looking for lice in the hair of the other one and is crushing them with her nails.
This gesture which is not peculiar to humankind looks back to archaic exchanges between people. It is both a disgusting and reassuring vision. The lice represent what is repulsive in a person. To patiently remove lice from the head is to overcome a first hostile reaction and to see only another self.
REASONS FOR HOPE
Black/White - 2010 - 2min - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron - this video is part of WONDER, the video-composition of the FemLink-Art Collective
For Malala Yousafzai and her fight against the traditions which forbid the education for women that maintain them in ignorance and dependence.
A girl draws the letters of the alphabet on the wall. Two men ask her to erase them creating an atmosphere of strong tension. In a scene behind closed doors, the looks and words of both men and their attitudes are a lesson for the little boy there. Contrary to the intimidated girls who rush off, he stays.
DEAD LETTERS
Black/White - 2010 - 2min - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron - this video is part of AGGRESSION, the video-composition of the FemLink-Art Collective
Imagination helped men compensate for their ignorance and·master their fears. When the result of the imagination of a single person becomes The Truth·for a multitude of·other persons, doubt is the only obstacle to indoctrination.
THE DOUBT
Black/White - 2008 - 2min - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron - this video is part of VITAL, the video-composition of the FemLink-Art Collective
When a bubble becomes a "life conductor"
THE BANKER AND THE FINANCIAL BUBBLE
Black/White - 2009 - 2min - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
When I created this video, I lived in the Middle East. Very often the medias reported events which often seemed to me crazy and dramatic. The stereotypical way a lot of men consider their honor and their virility are at their origin barbaric acts against women most of the time, but sometimes against other men, too.
The story in the video was in the "Gulf News", the 25th August 2008. That day, because of a mustache a crime was committed in one of the United Arab Emirates.
I was feeling very lucky to be born in a country where this kind of caricature stereotype is absent from the minds of men. In the video I draw a parallel between barbarity and tolerance. In sensuous play with my boyfriend, our legs fight delicately together.
CARICATURES AND MALES
Black/White - 2009 - 2min - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron - this video is part of MAN, the video-composition of the FemLink-Art Collective
Above me, the tallest tour in the world,
Next to me, the biggest shopping mall in the world,
To a radio broadcast, the most serious global economic crisis,
In the newspapers, the most serious climate change,
In front of me, the man the most...
In front of him, steps... After the steps... the emptiness
Twenty years ago, we could predicted all of this, but our governments didn't change anything.
SOMEWHERE IN 2009
Black/White - 2009 - 2min - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
"What is it that has a voice and walks on four legs in the morning, on two at noon, and on three in the evening?" Oedipus answered that it was man who, as a child crawls on all fours, as an adult walks on two legs, and in old age uses a stick as a third leg.
THE SHADOW OF THE SPHINX (The Life is a Children's Game)
Black/White - 2008 - 7min - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
Overconsumption and overpopulation… we behave towards the planet like virus in a healthy body. Our irresponsible behaviour towards the future is my main preoccupation. The continual growth of the world population is my strongest concern.
It is warning of war, malnutrition, poverty, diseases, obstacles in the education, regression of human rights and particularly rights of women.
TOO MUCH
Black/White - 2008 - 2min - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron - this video is part of PREOCCUPATION, the video-composition of the FemLink-Art Collective
"We need the "Lightnesses of a World" created by Veronique Sapin who never end in deep beings by braving the fall with flying images always close to the imbalance and the extinction".
Marc Mercier, in Bref Magazine, September 2007
THE LIGHTNESSES OF A WORLD
Black/White - 2007 - 10 min - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
When the smile is illuminating the face, it encourages the sympathy. When a frank smile turns gradually into a sad smile, the doubt comes and the positive emotion is transformed in feelings of uneasiness. When this smile disapears and becomes a kind of facial expression with deep concern.
In the video, the face of a little girl oscillates between these two emotions. The loop from a gentle smile to a sad smile to a gentle smile... restricts the field of emotions in a pendular slip. The girl seems to struggle to put a sile on her lips before being again overwhelmed by negative thoughts.
FREEDOM
Black/White - 2007 - 1'35 - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
Equality is a principle whereby human beings share the same rights and duties. In the video, two children are playing. They are twisting each other. Great smiles are flourishing on their faces, but if we look carefully at the boy's gestures, the game is not so innocent. These images was taken unexpectedly without any instructions.
EQUALITY
Black/White - 2007 - 2'30 - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
We find fraternity in the encounter, the friction or the confrontation with people. On a daily basis, however, the link between people is most often depending of interests, competition, functionality and even distrust.
The video tells us about a self-sufficient fraternity which is reserved for those who share the same economic situation, the same origin, the same religion... The people who is not "with" becomes gradually "against".
FRATERNITY
Black/White - 2007 - 6'35 - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
The motto "Union gives strenght" must be kept in mind constantly
THE "WE" GAME
Black/White - 2007 - 2min - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron - this video is part of RESISTANCE, the video-composition of the FemLink-Art Collective
"Union gives strenght"
LIFES AND LINES - The Philosopher's Portrait
Black/White - 2006 - 9'35 - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
Everything will become dust: "Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas".
AND THEN, THE TOTAL BLANK
Black/White - 2005 - 2min - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron - this video is part of FRAGILITY, the video-composition of the FemLink-Art Collective
A succession of subtles echos driving a slow maturation, a fulfilment. The man’s movement is a junction between the grave and the light.
"Man (…) is like leaves. He needs wind to blow through to sing" (Jean Giono, "Let me joy remain")
THE HOURS AND THE INSTANT
Black/White - 2005 - 13 min - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
The video starts with one Zoom-in: a slow approach of the "earth" on which 3 children walk. One of them starts to run on a few meters·; he stops, then lowers him trousers to make excrement. The two others approach and make the same thing. All simply occurs, in silence and calms.
The image of the children undergoes a constant deleting : the white color seeks to impose itself according to a rate/rhythm and a variable intensity. The scene is revealed to us in partly only. The identity of the children remains undefined·; we distinguishe them only with their size and with their black shirt. This blur, associated with a strong contrast, gives them a body made up in the same matter as the ground which surrounds them. They arise from the image like a digest of dust.
The children seem to await something which does not arrive. They occupy the wait with actions related to their organic needs.
The Utopia is here the name of waiting which is spread in a cyclic and immutable time. It makes it possible to fix a term, an objective with any human life, even if this one is ultimately reduced to the satisfaction of essential needs.
UTOPIA
Black/White - 2003 - 11 min - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
A pastel poem about a wandering ark, guided by Noah's uncontrolled imagination. A new ark, a new Noah for a flood which perhaps has never receded.
BALANCE - The Uncertain Ark
Black/White - 2002 - 9 min - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
Inside an abandoned foundry, a man remembers the gestures made during his whole working life. Alone in a delapidated setting, the memories rise out of his body into movement that speaks of a lifetime of experience and imprints our memories of a bygone industrial era.
FLORIDA
Black/White - 1997 - 6 min - Sound Track - Co-director : Dominique Banoun
HUNT
Black/White - 1997 - 10 min - Sound Track - Co-director : Dominique Banoun
THE MARY'S WINDOWS
Black/White and color - 1999 - 14 min - Sound Track -
WALTZ
Black/White - 1999 - 1 min - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
THE LITTLE WHITE POINTS
Black/White - 1999 - 2 min - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
DAMES GAMES
Black/White - 1998 - 15 min - Sound Track - Original Score : Fleurine Guiguet d'Oron
WORLD OF SHELLS - Game of Impasses ("The World like a Child's Game no 8)
2mn. 40s., 2019, BW, Sound
This video is built in the same idea as "Reasons for Hope", », "Liberty, Egality, Fraternity", "The Sphinx", "The Reasons of Hope", 'The Doubt"... It is part of the videos which relies on children's games as a metaphor of the adult's world, with suspension points.
"The most common reason why men desire to harm one another finds its origin in the fact that many men have at the same time an appetite for the same thing; Yet they prove incapable of enjoying it together or of sharing it. Therefore, the strongest of the two will wqnt to possess it.
And it shall be decided by the sword who is the strongest."
Thomas Hobbes
The child prefers a bad toy, but a toy that is own, and not a toy that he can use in common with comrades. This is how the world of Having goes. Thus the world of Being moves away.
A SAME SUMMER
Color and BW - 3 min - Sound, no words - 2019
The facts : In August 2016, Omran Daqneesh, a Syrian boy, at age five, gained media attention after footage of him injured in what was alleged to have been an air strike. In August 2016 too, the game Pokemon Go was awarded five Guinness World Records·: 1 - most revenue grossed by a mobile game in its first month ($206.5 million); 2 - most downloaded mobile game in its first month (130·million downloads); 3 - most international charts topped simultaneously for a mobile game in its first month (top game in 70·different countries); 4 - most international charts topped simultaneously for a mobile game in its first month (top grossing in 55·countries simultaneously); 5 - fastest time to gross $100 million by a mobile game (reached in 20·days on July 26).
Statement : The same month en 2016, the 5-year-old boy made the front page of the international daily papers as well as the five world records recorded by the game "Pokemon Go". An information about a real war seemed to have the same importance than an advertising about a virtual war; as if the both events were on the same value scale.
With her video, "A Same Summer", Véronique Sapin justaposes these two informations as they left traces in her mind and in her body with feelings like vomiting, sadness and anger. With the benefit of hindsight of almost 3 years from these events, the obscene side which resulted from the juxtaposition of the two types of opposing emotions had another meaning.
IT WAS TALKING ABOUT LIGHT, DANCE AND HARMONY - The Disenchantment of the World
BW and color - 1 min 27 sec - 2021 - Sound Track
THE SCREAM
BW and color - 2 min 34 sec - 2021 - Sound Track, this video is part of DANGER the video-composition of the FemLink-Art Collective
The image is sliding quickly on the grass them it is climbing on the tree's trunk up to branches. Colored and bright abstract forms appear in a close-up and in slow motion. Then gradually, the images plan becomes wide and it reveals the reasons of the abstract forms' presence: a big plastic sheet is trapping in the shaken branches and it is enlightened by a sunset.
Are the plastic waste in one tree compatible with the poetry and esthetism ? By proposing "She spoke about light, dance and harmony" as a metaphor for the disenchantment of the world, I speak about the impostures of our civilization.
Our first reaction by discovering a big sheet of plastic which is trapped in tree's branches, is negative. We are irritated, shocked, disgusted. We remove the sheet to free the tree, or we turn the head to look an other way. We don't try to observe the subtle shivers of forms and lights which travel inside the shaken plastic sheet.
At the opposite, if the first images we are discovering on the screen are these subtle shivers of forms and lights, we are fascinated. The abstract forms are renewed according to a mysterious origin. Our look is the one of the esthete contemplating a work of art
When the close-up gradually changes for a large angle, then we discover the imposture. Our surprise moved in consternation. However we lived an esthetic experience even it has a "bitter taste".
Several mouths are voicing the same scream; the scream of all times and of all the places. No eyes, noses or mouths are isolated on the faces. That makes it possible for them to share a single soul, the soul of humanity. That's as the aria in an Opera: the singer sings the aria after the recitative when the story is reaching a point of no return which only the aria can take forward.
Found on YouTube, cropped and slowed down. A little girl is screaming in a megaphone. This video was taken in the USA during a demonstration againt police. The child is asking police to protect people instead of shooting them.
I cut her sentence to keep only : "and you too, you need to start" ; Everyone must feel concerned and act to make things change.
We don't see the child's face, she is turning the back. We only can hear her scream. It's like an advent.
The video is including with 12 photographies in BW and a video. The photographies come from my series "The Scream".
At the beginning, the image is dotted with white dots that gradually merge up to take the shape of several lines. They evolve by intermingling until only one of them remains, like a dangling horizon. When a foot lands on the lines, it acts like a switch : black switches to white and the line becomes black like ink. Then common jumps of two people will be necessary to stabilize the horizon line.
The dot is both a punctuation sign that marks the end of one sentence and the beginning of another one, and it is also the origin of any line that is created by accumulation of dots.
In the image, the dots symbolize the metaphor of each people who gather together as clans, then tribes, societies, states and finally one civilization. Wars, clashes, rivalries and periods of peace have come together to write our common european history.
In the image, a stable horizon emerges when the will of people is to reach a common purpose.
The line doesn't define only a horizon, it is the contour of the matter. The lines which is the circonference of the feet, come from the scattering points too. We are the descendants of our civilisation's History and also we come from individual stories.
HAS BEEN
2mn. 35s., 2022, Couleur, No Sound
The image appears in the centre of the projection in a narrow rectangle in phone mode.
These images were shot by chance during a walk by the author of the video when she passed a fashion photography session.
They shows a woman playing the seductress in front of an oil tanker. The woman leaves the image at the end of the video.
The video presents two kinds of "Has-Been": the oil and the woman-object.
The video is a metaphor for the behaviour of our societies and their dependence on oil. The departure of the woman marks both the end of this dependence and the end of the objectification of women.
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LINES OF HARMONY
Black/White - 4 min 40 sec - 2020 - No sound
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VEILED
1 mn 17 sec - couleur - son - 2023
Video constructed in circular movements. Behind glass, a half-open mouth emerges from a dark mass of hair. The face continues to rotate to the right, plunging again before re-emerging. With each turn, the face takes on an increasingly saturated shade of red, until the features are no longer recognizable, as burning.
Véronique Sapin works with black-and-white images. She favors color when it imposes itself as a metaphor.
Here, it's not the hair that's veiled, it's the hair that veils. Is it to catch her breath that the woman opens her mouth, or is it for pleasure? The face is thus always veiled, always slightly revealed in a close-up where only the hair frames it and only the red lips suggest a boundary. The close-up prevents us from stepping back, from reading anything. It's as if we're suspended between several possible interpretations.
Come, let's live and think between the lines
B&W, 2min14
Video or video-installation
Vertical black and white lines cross the image like a bar code. Little by little, small movements catch the eye. Two shapes cross the black boundary into the white line and cross it. As their shadows gradually fade, we can make out two people walking side by side.
Principle : The image is captured in an overhanging position.
Statement
The straight line does not exist in nature. It is a human production, present in all civilizations. It structures the visual environment: temple colonnades, Egyptian or Mayan pyramids, minarets, bell towers...
The various forms of power, spiritual or political, have asserted their strength by erecting ever-higher constructions. Physical lines connect (the Ariadne's thread) and separate (borders), while mental lines imposed by ourselves (traditions, religions) or imposed on us (laws) connect those with the same ideas and separate those who think differently.
The video is a poetic invitation to cross lines, i.e. to take a side road to resist the standardization of thought, to reflect on what is passed on to us as truth and to develop our critical faculties.
Video-Installation
- a monitor positioned vertically on a wall
- black and white lines (painted or glued) imitating a barcode frame the monitor.
- the top and bottom lines of the video image serve as a base for the barcode lines (as the image moves slightly towards the end, the aim is to follow the lines at the beginning of the video as closely as possible).