SANS TITRE 84 utilise des photos découpées en bandes verticales, horizontales et diagonales d’un objet hautement valorisé, l’Arc de triomphe de Paris. Chaque photo n’a que peu d’intérêt, elle n’est que le moment d’une série qui se dirige dans deux directions. La sérialisation des photos appelle le temps. La série façonne un temps qui subvertit la photo. Chaque photo des 4 séries (une autour de l’Arc: 24 positions de prises de vues respectant l’inscription au sol d’une étoile à 24 branches, les 3 autres allant vers l’Arc de trois avenues différentes) est banale, standardisée. Le mélange des vues (2 à 2) produit de nouveaux objets qui mettent en place des moments distincts dans la rotation autour de l’Arc. Ainsi des architectures sont-elles invoquées, convoquées dans leurs restitutions différentielles de l’objet initial. L’objet se perd dans son image deux fois doublée et se reconstitue démembré. A chaque fois que le «cher objet» s’approche au plus près de sa configuration perdue, l’autre réapparaît et heurte de son hétérogénéité la belle homogénéité refusée.
Œuvre appartenant à une collection privée et au Musée National d’Art Moderne (Centre Georges Pompidou)
Sans Titre 84 employs photos of the Arc de Triomphe which are then cut into vertical, horizontal and diagonal strips. The serial aspect of the photos invokes time, shaping time which subverts the still photos. The Arc transforms itself by coupling with itself. the instantly recognizable identity of the object is thus short-circuited, creating tension in the gaze which seeks to re-establish that lost of identity, for the object gets lost in its twice doubled image and must reconstruct itself, dismembered. The image paradoxically and simultaneously gives of itself in order to withhold. The Arc de Triomphe’s power is such that, even though heavily reworked through the strips, it tends to efface this reworking. Hence the necessity of twinning the screens. Offering a twin, if not identical one, which will attack the « much longed for » (politically, symbolically, touristically) object. Movements are simulated, realm of imitation, simulation of cinema. The film presents false movements. The work of fiction.
« Even more systematic in its découpage, Sans Titre takes as its raw material photos of the arc de Triomphe taken from each of the avenues that join as the star geometry which gave the site its former name of Place de l’Etoile. These views are interwoven using the same type of vertical striping used in Eliclipse: here, because the arch remains the object depicted in each image, a different result is obtained. The structural dismembering and reconstructing of the referential architecture form furnishes a series of new, inventive architectural designs, constructs free of the determining laws of the simple arch form, as well as the symbolic signifiance this monument has garnered. Architecture becomes hypothetical, redefining itself in an imaginary imaging of shifting elements. Displacement is the prionciple taht allows for this realignment of geometries against symbol and function.
Beauvais shows also Sans Titre in double projection which introduces into the reassembled forms a visual doubling. In both versions, the film prposes to divest the image of the monument of its held significations, to erect instead a structured vision entirely based in film montage itself, without title, perhaps, to indicate this effacement of prefigured signifiance. »
Maureen Turim in The Displacement of Architecture, Avant-Garde Films in Cinema & Architecture, Iris n° 12 Méridiens Klincksieck, Paris 1991
Film belonging to a private collection and to the Musée National d’Art Moderne (Centre Georges Pompidou)