Installation #3
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2008
Video Film format 4X3 – Colour, Music : Steve Reich, 7’20
The passageway’s themes and the “travelling” of the urban eye, to which the two previous Installation made reference, here find a physical expression. The train – it is not coincidence that the subject of the very first film is a key metaphor in any didactic explanation of the theory of relativity – is skilfully integrated here by Michel Lorand in the formal language that is his trademark, a language based on movement, perceptive transitions and on optical oscillations between transparency and reflection.
This film, which is about seven minutes long shows the route, both above and below ground, of the Brussels North-Midi connection, a junction whose plans date back to the 19th century but that was only inaugurated in 1952.
The film not only evokes the city with its strangely empty stations, but also transforms train travel into a game of lightning and reflections between camera lens, train windows that cross each other and neon lights affixed to the tunnel’s pillars. In the same way as rails are installed to achieve travelling shots or that a film reel resembles a railway line, Michel Lorand brings back his railway travel, filmed with a video camera, to a game of optical stimuli and urban travelling.
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