Marina Smorodinova
Piscine - Film - 17min - 2018
présenté dans le cadre de l'exposition Panorama 20
To write this I decided to start with a unique location: a swimming pool that made a strong impression on me.
I started going there often, meeting people, finding my film.
I discovered a “plot”: after forty years of service, the pool was closing for work. I now started writing a fiction and observing the pool in the present. I chose a large cast (30 people). I found my two main characters.
When I got to the editing suite I felt the poetic side of the place was lost. I erased my characters. I listened to what the images were telling me, while trying to get close to my feelings.
In the end I had the impression I was in the process of making “The Black Square” by Malevich: lots of thought, lots of work, to end up with a simple form, “doable in five minutes.”
In my case, however, it is a square drawn by a child aged four. It looks like a square, but it is still awkward. Squares are not easy to draw.
Marina Smorodinova
Marina Smorodinova was born in Vsevolozhsk (Всеволожск), Russia.
With degrees from the State University of Saint Petersburg (conflict management) and the École Supérieure d’Art de Lorraine in Metz, she is currently continuing her research at Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains in Tourcoing.
Social interactions in everyday life are the material of her artistic research. She is interested in people in simple situations, like the ones in the plays of Anton Chekhov. Devoid of any real plot, these scenes nevertheless have a strong narrative structure. It is this banality which means the flow of time – emptiness – can be made visible, and that one can get to the essence of what is shown by the image and sound. This plainness of the situation makes it possible to attain a balance between movement and immobility, between sound and silence, between pencil stroke and blank paper. Her work usually takes the form of films, drawings, installations or performances.
Production
Acknowledgments
Piscine olympique Jean-Éric Bousch, Forbach.
