Conversation with Septembre Tiberghien
Revue Possible n°1
Winter 2018
Translated to English from French by Hana Barhoumi
Link to the conversation / French
Aesthetic emotions —the kind that deeply move and shape us— are rare. While visiting Ismaïl Bahri’s exhibition last summer at Jeu de Paume (1), I was struck by the fact that such small gestures could provoke such a desire for connection. As if the video projections there allowed us to immerse ourselves in a whole series of inner states, which instead of inducing isolation and solitude, actually facilitated encounters with others. Consensus. Consequently, I wanted to get to know the author of these images. And that’s how we met, one Monday morning at the end of August in Paris, in his studio.
Septembre Tiberghien : Can you tell us about the genesis of your exhibition? Was the decision to turn the exhibition into a kind of camera obscura present at the start, or did it only come about afterwards?
Ismaïl Bahri : The construction of the exhibition happened organically, little by little. The first idea was the eye-catching visual at the entrance, the drop seen from the door frame. From there, we arranged the rest with the intuition of building a sort of development, something that transforms slowly, by capillarity. Each image leads to another. It begins with recordings of intimate, enclosed spaces, focusing on material transformations. Then, as we progress, the images fade, hollow out, or become overexposed. It finishes with the luminous whiteness of the film Foyer. This progression develops a paradox — the more the image fades, the more the outside world enters. The rise of the whiteness coincides with an opening to elements like wind and voices. But, as you can imagine, these intuitions had to be tested within the space itself.
ST : So you’re saying there wasn’t preliminary work done to develop these ideas in the gallery itself?
IB : Not much and I actually found that frustrating. It’s hard for me to project without being in the space itself. And there's nothing more enjoyable than working on-site, surrounded by the images, the emptiness, and the fullness. I’ve had some opportunities to do so, but not enough.
ST : There’s a kind of pivot, a nodal point, around Dénouement, that is the magnetic force that leads the viewer from one point to the next in the exhibition.
IB : That’s right, it’s the backbone of the exhibition. We built the hallway that takes the viewer towards Dénouement. Walking toward this video mirrors the approach of the silhouette within it. There’s a symmetry, a mirroring effect. This video is important because it embodies key elements of the exhibition: attention to detail, scale, duration, and optical adjustment. It’s synchronized with the video Source since both are eight minutes long and explore similar themes. They both share a slow progression : in Source a black hole forms, while in Dénouement, an obscure figure emerges. Together, they create a rhythm of light and darkness, turning the space into a kind of pulsing heart that energizes the other projections. From this, I realized the exhibition wasn’t just shaped by the images but also by the luminous energies produced by the videos. This is why video interests me—it transmits images through energy.
ST : It’s life in motion.
IB : Yes, video images are lights that illuminate, darken, tremble, and cast shadows. Video projections carve out images in the luminosity that already surrounds us. Dénouement, for example, was projected in large format so that it energetically affected the other videos and so the silhouette’s of the viewers were visible.
ST : I got the impression that there were just as many things revealed as there were hidden in your exhibition. Like one video could also eclipse another. The meaning isn’t obvious right away, there is a mystery that remains in these actions or phenomena that invites different interpretations of the work. Revers, for example, evoked several different layers of meanings to me despite, or rather thanks to, its bareness and simplicity. It's something quite tenuous — hanging on by a thread.
IB : Maybe. All I know is that I work from what’s already been done, from things that are already there. I’m not obsessed with constantly reinventing my work. Each work emerges from the others, like a plant cutting. It involves repetition and variation which can create polysemy. For instance, Revers stems from the final seconds of Dénouement, where we see a close-up of hands rewinding a thread. I felt that moment held endless potential for development. From there, I crafted the repetitive gesture in Revers, but it happened somewhat unconsciously. I believe my best pieces are the most intuitive ones. The more calculated ones feel unsuccessful. A successful work lies at the intersection of intention and a kind of unawareness. They must exist at the intersection of a plan and a kind of unconsciousness or unawareness. Revers begins with intuitive manipulation, carried out blindly in the studio, and through repetition, it becomes rather haunting.
ST : Yes, it’s probably the most programmatic piece in the exhibition. You enter into ritual time, a gesture repeated so many times that it could even become irritating. The sound element likely plays a role in that too. At the same time, it’s a fascinating gesture, almost hypnotic. You feel a kind of ambivalence toward it.
IB : It’s the last piece I created because, as I was constructing the exhibition, I felt there was a need for a counterpoint to the deliberately flat, slow, and monotone quality of the beginning of the exhibition. Revers acts as an abrasive echo to that almost motionless flatness. Later, I realized that this video embodies the subtractive progression of the exhibition: it moves from the printed image toward blankness, from something full to its subtraction. I had an earlier version of Revers that I showed at the Rennes Biennale, and when I presented it there, I felt there was a problem. So, I revisited it in order to refine and push it even further. This is something I do more and more now. I use exhibitions as opportunities to test the pieces. The friction with reality, the distance, taking the time to see, and discussing the work often leads me to revisit and unfold pieces differently. For example, Revers and Foyer are developments of earlier versions. In this sense, the exhibition could be understood in a chemical sense, like exposing film to light, to its external environment. The exhibition is not an end in itself but a kind of vector, a hypothesis confronted with external contradictions. Later, a reaction occurs, shaping the exhibitions that follow.
ST: Two things struck me in the exhibition: the format of the videos and the very precise construction of the framing, which reveals a lot about the act of showing. For example, in Revers, every time you stop crumpling the sheet, you show it to the viewer. This act of pointing it out is both subtle and very powerful. The way you framed the image, focusing on the action, leaves no room for identifying the individual or the space where the action takes place.
IB: Yes, it’s a character. It could be anyone.
ST : We see the same thing in Dénouement, where the character's head is cut off. Yet, the video remains very grounded in reality, very concrete.
IB : Yes, I am moved by artists who are at the intersection of a certain form of derealization and something raw.
ST : The sheet you’re crumpling becomes something else over time. It undergoes a transformation. There is a metamorphosis. It becomes like skin, passing through all sorts of states. These might be, as you mentioned, reflections of the previous exhibitions. A sort of prism. Which echoes the final video in the exhibition. Yet, something still rubs me the wrong way, and I don’t mean to make a bad pun, but nowhere in the presentation text is there mention of a political dimension in the work, even though I feel it’s present everywhere. In Revers, there’s something very iconoclastic: we witness the death of the image. In Foyer, the sheet of paper that obscures the camera lens is an excuse to make people talk and reveal all sorts of contrasting attitudes toward stolen or captured images.
Did I imagine this political dimension, or is it actually intended?
IB : No, you’re right. The political question is present, but I wanted to make sure it wasn’t overemphasized. It’s something that should be felt, eventually. Consciously, I just wanted to set things up without restricting the interpretation too much. That’s why the exhibition is titled Instruments, which is concise but assumes that the viewer will engage with it in their own way, based on their experience of the exhibition. What we have before us are simply instruments that may or may not activate something. Of course, there’s the risk that nothing happens. In this sense, the political question runs through the work. It is part of the development of the course: the more the image recedes, the more space seems to open up for others. The blankness, the incompleteness in the image, becomes an infinitive where perceptions are conjugated. I don’t know, but I think Foyer suggests this. The film revolves around how the agitated outside world comes to populate the blankness in the image. In this sense, I believe it’s a political film. As for Revers, the use of advertising images and photographs of characters, very canonical and very loaded, places the work in a certain context. The crumpled images, emptied of their content, are ads you can still find on the streets of Paris. This grounds the gesture in the world. And, in a way, crumpling these images is a way of maintaining a frictional relationship with what these images represent.
ST : You can feel there’s real mastery in the gesture. There’s almost a craftsmanship in the way the fingers move.
IB : I practiced a lot! Especially when it came to choosing which magazines to use. Most images fade within twenty to thirty minutes. But some in just five minutes. It’s really important because in these videos, to act is to film, and vice versa. The gesture and the film are made together. The development of the gesture becomes the unfolding of the film, with a beginning and an end, a plot and a resolution. I worked with tobacconists to find magazine pages that could dissapear in five minutes, without having to speed up the process. I’d go to see them, we’d discuss the print quality, paper weight, content of the images… But yes, a lot of repetition was necessary.
ST : That inevitably raises the question of staging.
IB : Yes, for sure. Staging is present in all the videos, except the last ones. The further you go into the exhibition, the less control there is. But yes, staging is something I think about a lot. Sometimes I think it’s good, sometimes not. I’m a bit confused about it. I think it’s important if we consider it as a frame, as something that allows you to rule out certain things. And repetition, in this sense, serves to refine, to exhaust the possibilities, and then focus on the little that remains, to make something with that. But all of this isn’t very conscious. What was present from the start in Revers was the question of the body. I became aware of it when rereading my notes. I found this intuition, a kind of program: “two bodies affect each other.”
ST : Yes, there’s really a physical transfer happening.
IB : One body seems to transfer into another. The image turns to smoke as it becomes skin, while the fingers manipulating the image become tinted with its pigments. And the two skins, the skin of the fingers and the skin the paper becomes, eventually merge, extending into each other. The question of sound is important because I asked Pierre Luzy, the sound engineer, to ensure that we are inside the paper, within the gesture, the grain, the material. The framing of the image, on the other hand, places us at a distance. The sound puts you inside the experience, and the image puts you inside the observation of that same experience. I don't know if it works, but it was intuition.
ST : It’s definitely quite immersive. How do you work? Do you rehearse until you get the perfect gesture, or did you do several takes to make the video?
IB : I filmed for two days straight. I think there were about sixty takes. I selected six of them. I created a variation, somewhat arbitrarily. It often takes around two hours to really get into the gesture, to break away from automation and experience it almost like a trance.
ST : It’s very performative.
IB : Yes, at first, it’s very mechanical. At some point, though — with fatigue and maybe boredom — you settle into the gesture. You learn to conform to the paper as it transforms. You become attuned to the material, its weight, the dust it gives off. The persistence creates a ripple effect. Once you’re caught in the movement, you start questioning less. That’s why the first takes were usually the weakest. I’d use magazine pages I liked the least during the warm-up. A sculptor friend of mine, Loïc Blairon, was behind the camera helping me. He knew how to spot and gradually hand me the images that were most important. We saved those for last. So a tension would rise, like : this is a good one, we can’t mess it up!
ST : Is this approach of starting from a studio practice to develop a video something that you often use in your work?
IB : Yes, there is really a duality to my activity. Sometimes I engage in reading and note-taking, which can last two or three weeks. Reading and writing help me focus. After that, I completely transform the space into a workshop for manipulation and research. I usually film the work as it’s happening. The gesture is caught in the act of being filmed, and vice versa. I film the experiments to keep records, but mainly because I’ve found that capturing the gestures as they unfold lets me be both part of the process and a witness to it. It’s a way to be both in the center and on the periphery of the work. Most of the time, these experiments don’t lead anywhere. But occasionally, something clicks — like finding a foothold on a cliff face. It’s quite rare. And often, that moment of connection is tied to a feeling of recognition, of suddenly recognizing something. You surprise yourself truly considering this thing. You finally see it, and it becomes significant. I think these are the moments I work for.
ST : The way you describe your process, it sounds like you're looking for something obvious.
IB : Very often, it’s connected to déjà-vu, to gestures we’ve done a thousand times. Talking with people about the exhibition, I realized that all the gestures explored in the videos are closely tied to the notion of déjà-vu. Setting fire to a piece of paper, crumpling it, rolling it up — these are things we’ve all done, to some extent, experimented with in one way or another.
ST : They seem like gestures tied to childhood.
IB : Yes, I think that’s very important. To dig into something that’s been there for a long time. Like something we can’t stop replaying. That’s where the difficulty lies, because it’s very hard to refine and push further what we think we already know. Most of the time, working is about rehashing repetitions, clichés. The challenge is to knead these clichés, to be surprised by them. I wait for that surprise. It happens rarely, but only with persistence.
ST : I now see the connection between your work and that of Édith Dekyndt. Allowing things to happen, letting them emerge from underlying layers.
IB : Exactly, I look at her work a lot. She’s one of the artists who affect me, whose work I let pass through me. And Edith Dekyndt’s work improves me in a way. But I feel that I am more attached to the question of the image than, while she’s more focused on recording the experience. And it’s never as beautiful as when she seems to do it spontaneously... I could benefit from soaking that in more. What touches me about her work are her exhibitions, which feel very organic. Some of her propositions may seem trivial, but you sense that it doesn’t matter, because they’re elements of an organic whole. But then, I find that her fascination with phenomena sometimes leads her to simplicity, whereas other experiences remain charged with complexity, particularly in terms of meaning, which deeply resonates with me.
ST : Sometimes, one might wonder if it’s luck that creates the artwork.
IB : Yes, you’re right. Ending the exhibition with this video (Esquisse) that points toward her work came about naturally. It felt obvious. When we filmed that flag with Youssef Chebbi, I immediately recognized something of her in it, and I thought: Édith is here! That flag, caught by the wind and the waves, then became an “appel d’air” (literally, "a draft of air," in this context, a subtle invitation or opening that brings freedom or a new perspective) to her work.
ST : It resonates quite well, in fact, with the final video, Foyer, which becomes a kind of emblem.
IB : Looking back now, I think the whole exhibition was made for Foyer. As if it were about creating a preliminary space of slowness to prepare oneself, by the end of the journey, to truly observe and linger over Foyer. The beginning of the exhibition is almost motionless, bordering on still images. Certain videos seem frozen, static. You have to get close to see the micro-movements. They demand your attention and your time. The start of the path of the exhibition feels very constrained, immobile, held back, restrained. Then little by little it loosens, opens up, accelerates, and becomes agitated. In contrast, it seems to me that the breeze of air at the end is more noticeable because the beginning is so contained. Sometimes people tell me that they like the beginning and not the end or vice versa. But to me it’s a continuum.
ST : Especially since you’re forced to retrace your steps to exit the exhibition, meaning you have to cross the same thresholds again.
IB : I almost called the exhibition "Threshold," actually. But I didn’t. Yes, you pass through the same thresholds again, but I think the return is marked by the voices of Foyer. Perhaps the perception of the other videos is slightly altered as a result. I’m not sure... I hope so. Ultimately, I think the question of nuance is what’s important in the exhibition. A transformation of state, but not of nature, which is clear in Foyer — a film about nuance. Nuances of tones, but also of the different perceptions of a shared reference point.
ST : It’s quite remarkable to see how this little piece of paper can loosen tongues.
IB : Yes, these people project their thoughts onto this piece of paper. They make their own cinema, and in so doing, they make the film.
ST : At the same time, Foyer remains a very formalist piece, which I personally find very beautiful, with all its shades of white and the subtlety it unfolds. At no point can you imagine this piece existing solely as sound.
IB : It seems to me that the friction between image and sound intertwines two opposing polarities: on one hand, a very formalist, abstract, and luminous aspect; and on the other, the bustling of the street and voices. It’s like trying to paint a Malevich in a Tunisian street! There’s this idea of an intellectual stepping into the street, preoccupied with a question that might seem futile. What moves me, in hindsight, about this film is that all the discussions were spontaneous. At the time, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was completely absorbed in observing the paper, and the conversations with passersby were recorded without my paying much attention. This implies that to watch the film is to see it searching for itself. There’s a kind of knot linking the moment of trial and error in the street to the moment of transmission to the audience watching the film. The piece of paper, the screen becomes a membrane that both connects and separates these two moments and spaces. When I realized this, I thought: what a lucky accident! Like the flag, it's an accident of camera manipulation. When Youssef noticed that the fabric (of the flag) was becoming an optical instrument capturing the landscape, wow! That’s why I say, as you progress through the exhibition, the more these accidents happen. The entire exhibition could have revolved around this idea, but it seemed important to me to keep everything restrained at the beginning to release the energy at the end. Like a series of preliminaries leading to a final release.