Michel Lorand

 

Medea
—  

2004

Video installation, 4 monitors, colour, French dialogue, 16’
Booklets, translated into English, German or Dutch.

The installation centres around a large square table in dark wood. A monitor is placed in the middle of each side, turned inwards towards the centre of the table. Spectators can sit on stools around the table, between the monitors. Four desk lamps are placed at the corners of the table to make it possible to follow the text of the installation. The text is printed on sheets of paper, in the original language of the installation and in translation. This arrangement invites the spectator to take part in a kind of “round table first reading”, like actors working on the text of a play.

In this installation, Michel Lorand takes as his point of departure the universal myth of Medea, the mother who killed her children. The prose text might be the poetic “synopsis” of a film or a play. Medea is viewed in a contemporary context, and the text is produced in four variations, one for each voice, through the set of monitors.

The polyphony of the voices and the casting have nothing to do with the story; they are based on its construction, interpretation and reception. Each screen shows a different actor, literally interpreting the roles of author, director, actress, and spectator. The four versions of the text are made distinct by the use of the four tenses, one for each protagonist: the present, the past, the future and the conditional.

“The difference between text and image is obvious. The text offers meanings, the image forms. Each shows something: the same thing and something else. In showing, each shows itself but just as easily the other. And thus shows itself as the other: the image shows itself to the text which shows itself to the image.”

Medea