Virginie Litzler
Pratique des aires ( 2013 )
8 x 10 in, diptych of 2 c-type prints
edition of 5 (editions 1-3 donated to MATERIAL)
Price: $200
Those
"When a body moves or a force acts, it affects the curvature of space and time—and in turn the structure of space-time affects the way in which bodies move and forces act."
—Stephen Hawking
I work with people.
Some pass by, some stay, some others leave a distinguished trace. 'They are not actors or dancers', I always insist, without saying who they are. They are poets of their idiosyncrasies. They are alchemists.
In the transition from their daily life to our encounter, we exchange gazes and movement, a discussion where words are upside down letters. The impossibility of making quick discourse due to the awareness of the body first exposed slows down the rapidity of the making, and explodes any form of choreographic expectation and productivity. We don’t know each other, we are together in a place disarticulating our spines, phalanges, and other bones, finding physical ways to communicate and resist gravity. I am not recording a performance—rather, we are rediscovering belonging to a place.
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I work with urban spaces.
They are dynamic and contain a trigger for movement, before being solidifies and sets—as with concrete, for example, which is liquid and malleable. The forces applied to concrete’s initially smooth state will shape forms, form other spaces, establish stage and backstage.
The multiple places that I find are extracted from their final aim. They have the capacity to transport a tangible spatial experience to a virtual one where the concrete indeed could move. Those tectonic components become volumes, their margins expand, un-defining initial architectural roles and challenging bodies within. As well, people and their bodies re-invent their articulation to those places, challenging the solid and the set environment.
Those ongoing conversations between people and urban spaces defy each time 'my photographic': the images that I am working with are in transit between the medium restraint and my necessity to make edges shiver.
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I work with motion. I work with the train n°9447.*
*A crowd is waiting on the platform for the train to arrive. No one really moves, the gaze directed towards the horizon; they are waiting for the engine to make its appearance. Curiously, everyone seems to hold his/her breath, and despite the ambient noise, everyone remains silent. The wait.
Suddenly, the train n°9447 approaches the station, platform 6. The stillness is slowly broken. Feet, legs, hands, head, hairs swing. It is about to happen. With the train, a weight seems to descend upon the entire station—as if everyone and everything went two feet under. The train forces everything and everyone to shake quietly. For a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second, gravity seems to change. Haste is invading the passengers; they are coming out of their travelling cage as quickly as possible, and with elegance. The station is becoming the stage of a theatre. From one place to another through time with motion. From one stage to the next.
—Gare du Nord, Paris.
Virginie Litzler is an artist and a PhD candidate at TrinityLaban in London. She received her MA of Fine Art from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Lyon in 2004 and her MA Photography from the Royal College of Art in 2006. Her current solo show Quadrature, is on until the 1st of March 2014, at The Cube, Corby (England).