Antonia Carrara
La définition d' une chose en soi - Installation - 2010
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 12
Installation
« La définition d'une chose en soi » Installation vidéo, 16mm transféré HD The Luxor temple of cinema, built in Paris in 1921 and inspired by Egyptian architecture, was briefly converted into a discotheque before being left abandoned in the 1990's. Compiled in the form of a "making-of", the film shows a guided tour of the site that traces back the plan of the Luxor temple from the writings of the Egyptologist Gaston Maspero; the film director Luc Moullet explores the site and its fantasized history, wandering through the decors of what remains of the Megatown nightclub in Luxor. The validity of the investigation methods applied to this irrational architecture is constantly questioned (). The project suggests a method of archaeological speculation based on a network of correspondences. Spatiotemporal correspondences, between ancient Egypt, the beginning of the 20th century and the present time; semantic correspondences relations of homonymy, visual assonances the persistence of motifs through different eras and of ritual nature the presentation of a rite like that of a film. () Under the influence of theories of knowledge through the absurd of Charles Hoy Fort, of the motif of the pyramid in Flaubert's works, or again through the meaning of signs of Roger Caillois.
