Cyprien Gaillard | Part 1
Desniansky Raion, 2007
AS I WAS MOVING AHEAD OCCASIONALLY I SAW BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUTY is a very simple newsletter where I share a collection of creative expressions I enjoyed coming across.
The seductive audiovisual language of Gaillard’s films recalls the eighteenth and nineteenth-century Romantic aesthetic tradition of seeking the sublime in images of ruins, catastrophes and topographical extremes. Yet his works can also be read as socio-critical analyses of colonialism, of the failed social aspirations of modernist architecture and the fluid nature of capital in the age of tourism and gentrification. Or as a meditation on how quickly we forget that all societies will eventually perish, one civilization ineluctably yielding to another.
Sprüth Magers
Desniansky Raion, 2007 [Section 1]
Desniansky Raion (2007, 30') […] constantly alternates between order and chaos. Made of three parts, […] the first section of the video shows a pitched battle between two hooligan gangs on the parking lot of a housing project in the suburbs of Saint Petersburg, filmed from a neighbouring building. Blues against reds, some wearing white gloves, the two compact groups move forward in an oragnised manner, then dismantle under shock before regrouping for a new assault. Calling to mind a battle scene in a medieval fresco or a classical painting, the outburst of violence, both savage and codified, is as repulsive as fascintaing.
Bugada & Cargnel
Desniansky Raion, 2007 [Section 2]
The second part is a static shot of the façade of a high-rise block in the suburbs of Paris, on wich a show is projected mixing light, music and fireworks. This grandiose staging, usually saved for historical buildings, ends abruptly with the building collapsing. The hypnotic vision of this monolithic fortress, sublimated by light and fire before being reduced to dust, echoes like the first class funeral of the modernist architectural utopias.
Bugada & Cargnel
Desniansky Raion, 2007 [Section 3]
The last section wanders through Desniansky Raion, a district in the suburbs of Kiev, filmed without flight clearance from a microlight, dangerously shaken by the wind, producing images both cinematographic and amateurish. Rising into a snowy and melancholic landscape, the multitude of stark buildings is at first disorderly; in this chaos of concrete then appears a group of towers arranged in a perfect circle, recalling the megalithic monument of Stonehenge, England.
Bugada & Cargnel
Cyprien Gaillard talks about Desniansky Raion | TateShots (2009)
