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Vue de l'exposition à La Galerie, Noisy-le-sec, 2010
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Members of the utopian commune of Llano del Rio, as unseen by Aldous Huxley, who lived next to its ruins years after 2009
Sculpture, bronze brut, 26 x 45 x 18 cm
Vue de l'exposition à la Galerie, Noisy-le-sec, 2010
Photographies Cédrick Eymenier
Members of the utopian commune of Llano del Rio, as unseen by Aldous Huxley, who lived next to its ruins years after est une statuette en bronze représentant un groupe de femmes en tenue de travail masculine. L’objet s’inspire d’un document photographique sur lequel ces cinq femmes anonymes membres de la communauté de Llano del Rio au sein de laquelle elles détenaient le droit de choisir leur métier, posent devant le chantier de construction d’un hôtel sur lequel elles travaillaient. Basée sur des principes acceptés par tous ses membres, cette communauté socialiste vit le jour en 1914 en plein désert de Mojave en Californie, créée par Job Harriman déçu par la politique.
Par sa facture brute, la statuette en bronze donne l’illusion de dater de cette époque, tel le vestige d’un passé enfoui par les sables et le désenchantement, renvoyant à un instantané où tous les espoirs étaient encore permis.
Faute de ressources suffisantes en eau, la communauté dut rapidement migrer vers le Missouri, laissant derrière elle un paysage entropique parsemé de ce qui deviendrait les ruines de ce projet utopique.
Des années plus tard, l’écrivain Aldous Huxley vécut non loin de ces vestiges. Malgré sa quasi-cécité, l’auteur du Meilleur des Mondes s’est montré visionnaire en critiquant la notion de progrès. Il livra ses réticences face au projet de Llano del Rio dans un texte intitulé Ozymandias, paru dans son recueil Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. L’œuvre de Bettina Samson Llano del Rio pop-up (Ozymandias) utilise ce livre à partir duquel est élaboré un pop-up reconstituant symboliquement à échelle réduite les ruines de la communauté. Une architecture de papier surgit, véritable souvenir atrophié d’un grand projet, abandonné avant même son achèvement.
Anne-Lou Vicente
Texte paru dans le journal de l'exposition Bettina Samson au centre d'art La Galerie de Noisy le Sec
The small bronze statuette Members of the utopian commune of Llano del Rio, as unseen by Aldous Huxley, who lived next to its ruins years after showsa group of women wearing men’s work clothes. It takes its inspiration from a photograph of these anonymous members of the Llano del Rio community, whose women had the right to choose their occupation, posing in front of the hotel they were helping to build. Set up by the politically disillusioned Job Harriman and run on lines acceptable to all members, this socialist community was born in 1914 in the middle of the Mojave Desert in California.
Its rough and ready treatment makes the statuette look like a period piece: like some vestige of a past buried under sand and disenchantment and referencing a snapshot taken back when everything still seemed possible.
Shortage of water soon forced the community to move to Louisiana, leaving behind it an entropic landscape dotted with what would become the ruins of the original utopian project.
Years later writer Aldous Huxley lived not far away. Despite his near-blindness, the author of Brave New World showed himself to be a visionary in his critique of the notion of progress. He described his reservations about the Llano del Rio project in “Ozymandias”, part of his collection Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Bettina Samson’s Llano del Rio pop-up (Ozymandias) uses a copy of Huxley’s book as the starting point for a pop-up, a symbolic, scaled-down reconstruction of the ruins of the community. Out of the pages bursts a paper structure, an atrophied souvenir of an ambitious project abandoned even before it was completed.
Text by Anne-Lou Vicente in “Bettina Samson”, La Galerie, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Noisy-le-Sec (exhibition 5 December 2009 – 13 February 2010).
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Llano del Rio pop-up (Ozymandias) 2009
Sculpture, livre, papier, plexiglas, 30 x 30 x 20 cm
The small bronze statuette Members of the utopian community of Llano del Rio, as unseen by Aldous Huxley, who lived next to its ruins years after showsa group of women wearing men’s work clothes. It takes its inspiration from a photograph of these anonymous members of the Llano del Rio community, whose women had the right to choose their occupation, posing in front of the hotel they were helping to build. Set up by the politically disillusioned Job Harriman and run on lines acceptable to all members, this socialist community was born in 1914 in the middle of the Mojave Desert in California.
Its rough and ready treatment makes the statuette look like a period piece: like some vestige of a past buried under sand and disenchantment and referencing a snapshot taken back when everything still seemed possible.
Shortage of water soon forced the community to move to Louisiana, leaving behind it an entropic landscape dotted with what would become the ruins of the original utopian project.
Years later writer Aldous Huxley lived not far away. Despite his near-blindness, the author of Brave New World showed himself to be a visionary in his critique of the notion of progress. He described his reservations about the Llano del Rio project in “Ozymandias”, part of his collection Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Bettina Samson’s Llano del Rio pop-up (Ozymandias) uses a copy of Huxley’s book as the starting point for a pop-up, a symbolic, scaled-down reconstruction of the ruins of the community. Out of the pages bursts a paper structure, an atrophied souvenir of an ambitious project abandoned even before it was completed.
Text by Anne-Lou Vicente in “Bettina Samson”, La Galerie, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Noisy-le-Sec (exhibition 5 December 2009 – 13 February 2010).
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Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow 2009
Disque rotatif, lettres adhésives, plexiglas opaline, moteur, adhésif, 100 x 100 cm
Diaporama du disque rotatif en mouvement
Le regard des personnages de la statuette en bronze se tourne vers le fond de la salle, comme hypnotisé par un disque stroboscopique produisant l’effet d’une double rotation inversée. L’œuvre de Bettina Samson Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow emprunte son titre au recueil de textes d’Aldous Huxley – utilisé pour Llano del Rio pop-up (Ozymandias) –, lequel reprenait lui-même une réplique de Macbeth dans la pièce éponyme de Shakespeare.
La phrase forme un cercle autour d’un disque stroboscopique, qui tourne inversement au sens de lecture de celle-ci, provoquant un premier vertige. Les points et traits inscrits concentriquement sur le disque semblent d’abord s’immobiliser, puis tourner furtivement vers l'avant pour enfin revenir en arrière, donnant ainsi l’illusion de changer perpétuellement de sens, les motifs centraux venant presque toujours en contradiction avec les motifs latéraux.
Diffusée par les néons qui rendent possible cet effet d’optique fondé sur la persistance rétinienne, la lumière jaune évoque de manière symbolique le désert de Mojave où s’établit la communauté Llano del Rio, et par la suite l’écrivain Aldous Huxley qui vécut une expérience mystique et psychédélique à proximité de ses ruines.
Visuellement condamnée à l’inertie, voire au retour en arrière, la formule répétitive « Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow » évoque l’idée d’un lendemain sans fin, paradoxalement sans véritable avenir, et, tel un mirage ou une hallucination, abolit de cette manière toute ambition progressiste.
Anne-Lou Vicente
Texte paru dans le journal de l'exposition Bettina Samson au centre d'art La Galerie de Noisy le Sec
The figures in the bronze statuette have their eyes fixed on the far end of the room, as if hypnotised by the stroboscopic disc and its double reversed rotation effect. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow reuses the title – itself a line from Shakespeare’s Macbeth – of the collection of texts by Aldous Huxley which Bettina Samson also draws on for her Llano del Rio pop-up (Ozymandias).
The phrase forms a circle around a stroboscopic disc which makes the head spin by turning counter-clockwise, in the opposite direction to our reading of the words. The concentric dots and lines on the disc seem at first to come to a halt, then to advance furtively before moving back again: the illusion is of ceaseless changes of direction, with the central motifs almost always conflicting with the peripheral ones. The yellow lighting – from neon tubes that enable this retinal persistence effect – harks back symbolically to the Mojave Desert, where the Llano del Rio community originally set up and where, later, the writer Aldous Huxley underwent a mystical psychedelic experience not far from the ruins. Visually condemned to inertia and maybe even to retrogression, the repetitive formula “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” evokes an endless yet paradoxically future-free day after, and like a mirage or a hallucination nullifies all progressive aspirations.
Text by Anne-Lou Vicente in “Bettina Samson”, La Galerie, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Noisy-le-Sec (exhibition 5 December 2009 – 13 February 2010). |
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