“Limbes” by Jean-François Matteudi (aka Bériou)

Title:

Limbes

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Filmmaker, Video Artist, or Animator(s):



• Jean-François Matteudi (aka Bériou)

Symposium:

• ISEA96: Seventh International Symposium on Electronic Art
• More artworks from ISEA96:  

Venue(s):

• Rotterdam World Trade Centre , Rotterdam , Netherlands

Duration:

5:40 minutes

Artist Statement:

Limbes, ten or so sequences supported by a narration, tells the memories of a baby in the womb. The film begins like science fiction. But as evidence mounts, we realize that the birth is imminent, and it becomes clear that the narrator is a human being in gestation. This story of initiation invites us -through virtuality- to reflect upon the concept of materialization the process by which things take form. And what if… matter did not exist…and what if the world and the objects we know were just a fine film, with no thickness to it…infinitely folded it on itself a fractal, thereby creating the illusion of mass? And what if…the inside and the outside had no consistency…and what if all matter were nothing but this remarkably deformable envelope sometimes touched by a breath..fashioning the appearance of a being, with an inside and an outside..then the other way round? And what if…being born meant creating a new fold…making it swell until it formed a bubble…tore the wall and escaped…leaving the mark of a navel? And what if…dying meant delving once more into the folds of this huge sheet of flesh? And what if…life were just a stage curtain, and the actor just the wind ruffling the curtain?