“Migratory: filmic exchanges and cinematographic weavings” presented by Bernard and Tsuda

Artists Statement

By resorting to filming resources such as cell phones, webcams and GPS, the Migrateurs (Migratory) project proposes and experiments with new filmic forms that replay and distort relations between space and time. The title Migratory is a tribute to the heterotopic qualities of the network whereby images, taken in a continuous movement, become unstable nebulas and are organized into constantly reshaped migratory streams. Forms of image editing and interlacing are updated by searching through reticulated patterns, for example, through offsetting, crossing or delegating the shooting. Thus, the scenario for Switched Eyes (2009) involves crossing operators: one person in Europe and one in Japan are equipped with two cameras. When the filmer in Japan presses the record button on their camera, they trigger not their own camera but their opposite number’s in Europe. In a similar vein, the film Reward (2009) crosses territories. A still camera is found in the woods with a memory card full of pictures of persons unknown. By deduction, it would seem that these people live in the city of Grenoble in France. So an investigation is conducted to try and trace them, from Japan, by exploring the Grenoble area with the Street View tool.