10: Virgil Vernier

4 April, 2015 - 20:00
SPHINX 3

 

 

SELECTION 2015

A dialogue between new audiovisual works, older or rediscovered films and videos by artists and filmmakers who work in the expanded field of moving image practice.

Mercuriales

Virgil Vernier
,
FR
,
2014
,
DCP
,
colour
,
104'

Cette histoire se passe en des temps reculés, des temps de violence. Partout à travers l’Europe une sorte de guerre se propageait. Dans une ville il y avait deux sœurs qui vivaient...” (Virgil Vernier)

In Mercuriales, the fractured landscapes of the Parisian banlieues are used as the hallucinatory backdrop for a twisted fairy tale on the spectres of futures past. Looking over these suburban landscapes are the cold shadows of the abandoned twin towers of Bagnolet, sad totem poles of an era gone by, dream residues of a world from before the future vanished from sight, when it was still conceivable to imagine a world different from the one in which we live. Guided by James Ferraro’s hypnagogic incantations and mutations of our throwaway culture, the characters wander through a scattered world of dead-end streets, endless runways and gateways covered with bright graffiti that only seems to conceal misery and anonymity, what is laid bare is the festering wound of the present, this age of wreckage from which we need to salvage what remains unimagined, in order to fill the void of the future.