Vincent Ceraudo
The Observatory - Film - 18min - 2016
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 18
There is a way of perceiving or observing things that does not involve the eyes. Something that obscures the gaze and goes beyond ordinary vision. The project proceeds in a succession of experiences filmed at the Camille Flammarion observatory in Juvisy-sur-Orge. The film’s unifying theme is the relations between telepathy and astronomy, a mysterious correlation that obsessed the French scientist Camille Flammarion (1842-1925) throughout his career as a researcher. The Observatory is a cinematic exploration that functions as an attempt to reactivate a place. Thought transmission metaphorically reflects the structure of the film but, as this proceeds, also becomes its own specific language. The camera records and probes beyond what is tangible; the editing is not guided by a narrative in the strict sense but more by the relations and coincidences that arise from the various presences in this observatory. The primary concern is to convey to the viewer the uncertainty, that trembling of reality caused by telepathic experience, or again the way this makes the feelings of reality and identity unstable. The spectator is invited to enter the deep reality of the place and the characters exploring it in a synchronicity of events that is beyond these protagonists. On 18 January 2016, a group comprising a medium, a scientist and researchers into the paranormal was invited to an observatory outside Paris. For several days, they explored the setting using their specialist skills. Knowing nothing about the history of this observatory, they each reactivated a history using these personal aptitudes. This video recording both constitutes and documents this experiment.
Vincent Ceraudo
Vincent Ceraudo was born in 1986 in Fontainebleau and graduated from Villa Arson, the Ecole nationale des Beaux-arts de Nice, France. His research is situated at the crossroads of diffe¬rent historical narratives; firstly, the ideas of magic and esotericism, and also science, and then also the potential of recording whether it be in video, photography or sound. Vincent Ceraudo explores the degree of uncertainty that constitutes our perception of reality. He adopts a liminal approach of displacement and attempts to capture interferences and variations. Fascinated by moments when our perception of reality escapes us, or by things that are simply excluded by our common sense of perception, the artist questions reality and its perceptible and acceptable boundaries. His work focuses on photography, installation, performance, sound and film. It has been presented at major contemporary art venues and film festivals such as the Salon de Montrouge, the art center and the Galerie carrée of the Villa Arson in Nice, the Museo d’arte Contemprana Villa Croce, in Genova, the MUMA, Monash University Museum of Art de Melbourne, the Fundation Botin in Santander, Spain, the International Contemporary Art Fair, Art-O-Rama in Marseille, and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Vincent will be artist-in-residence at the Casa De Velazquez, in Madrid for the summer. He currently lives in Paris and pursues his postgraduate studies at the Fresnoy, National Studio of Contemporary Arts.
Production
Partner
Acknowledgments
All the team of the movie, the promotion Manoel De Oliveira, all the technical poles of Fresnoy, Mécènes du Sud. A quite particular thanking to Victor Zébo, João Pedro Rodrigues, Jérôme Noirot, Yannick Delmaire, Blandine Tourneux, Edgar Allender, Tudi Nédic, Christophe Gregório, Aurélie Brouet, David Chantreau and François Lescieux, Baptiste Rabichon, Jacob Wiener.
