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Video installation composed of 38 videos of the ceiling of the Bordeaux Opera
Video, 1080, colour, silent, 20′, looped
Projection on the ceiling
Variable dimensions
Production : Opéra de Bordeaux
2020

For several days, holding my mobile camera at arm’s length, I filmed the ceilings of the Grand-Théâtre de Bordeaux.
In the center of the building, the place of the show: the so-called Italian room decorated with a fresco painted in the eighteenth century, seventeen meters high. Around this neuralgic point, where the public is welcomed, is organized a multitude of spaces necessary to the life of the theater: sewing and accessories workshops; storage, work, rehearsal, rest, security places; mechanisms and pipes, flows and circulations…
This succession of shots of the ceilings of the Grand-Théâtre makes up the 17-meter video installation, projected each evening on the ceiling of the Auditorium hall.
Remarkable ornaments rub shoulders with worn or standardized ceilings, the daylight of the skylights is juxtaposed with the warm or cold lighting of fixtures from all eras, the continuous rotation of the images is inspired by the kinetics of ballet.
From one place to another, the 17-meter installation unveils some parts of the long history of the Grand-Théâtre building and transposes it to the Auditorium, its contemporary extension.