Vadim Dumesh
La Base - Installation - 2020
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 22
Installation
A near future, or maybe recent past. The Base Arrière Taxi is a gigantic transit ground isolated on the outskirts of the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport. Here more and more aging Parisian taxi drivers from diverse backgrounds spend long hours waiting to be dispatched for rides from the terminals. Here they find refuge from fatigue and the fierce competition of the metropolis.
Over the years, this singular location, out of time and out of space, suspended between circulations and immobility, situated at the crossroads of ephemeral frontiers, has transformed into a second home for the drivers from all walks of life. In this non-place, learning, spirituality, recreation, and creativity erupt and subvert its original function as space of control.
Facing the major disruptions and crises of their epoch, facing the uncertainties or the trembling world, the drivers reclaim their time and space, and equipped with their smartphone cameras archive their knowledge, memories, and imaginations. Weaving these first-hand testimonies, gliding between dystopia and utopia, La Base is their message in a bottle, a chronicle, a proposition.
Vadim Dumesh
Vadim Dumesh is a documentary filmmaker, researcher and journalist, with an academic background in economics, film, arts and public affairs (at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, the Sam Spiegel Film School in Jerusalem and Sciences Po Paris). Originally from Latvia, in his works Vadim explores questions of mobility, circulation, belonging, and human condition in larger economic and political structures. He cultivates a transdisciplinary approach and is currently investigating the potential of co-creation practices, which he is developing in his doctoral thesis in artistic research and practice ʺSituated Gaze: Documentary authorship and collective creativity in the digital ageʺ co-directed by Le Fresnoy and the Université du Québec à Montréal.
Production
Acknowledgments
Philippe Bellaiche, Marine Gautier, Clara Chapus, Benoît Labourdette, Emmanuel Nahmias, Ronald Guttman, Jim Stark, Kendra Justine McLaughlin, Joël Curtz, Serge Gordey, Blanche Guichou, Eden Shavit, Richard Sidi et Maison du Film, Myriam Gast, Marine Coatalem, Alexia Jourdan et Mission Cinéma de la région Île de France, Jean Michel Frodon, Donato Ricci, Axel Meunier et Sciences Po médialab, Gwenaële Rot et Centre de Sociologie des Organisations, Eric Grizon, Laetitia Durandal, Sophie Barbosa et l’équipe de l'Aéroport Roissy Charles de Gaulle, Anne-Kathrin Brinkmann, Sirkka Möller et Berlinale Doc Station, Santiago Bonilla, Elina Kastler, Manon Maës.
