In this exhibition the Paris-born artist Marine Hugonnier presents a trilogy of three super 16mm films, transferred to DVD, which explore the way a landscape determines history or, vice versa, how ideology shapes a landscape.
'Ariana' (2003) is the story of a film crew whose intention is to film the mythical Panjshir Valley and to investigate how the landscape has determined the region's history. To do so, the crew attempts to find a vantage point to record a panorama of the entire valley. Access to this viewpoint is refused, because of its strategic value, and the crew returns to Kabul to record the ruins and traffic of the city. The crew obtains permission to shoot a final panorama which allows them to gaze over Kabul and across to the Hindu Kush Mountains. They realise that this spectacle gives them a feeling of euphoria and totality. They decide to stop filming. 'Ariana' is the story of a failed project that prompts a process of reflection about the idea of the 'panorama' as a form of strategic overview, as a cinematic camera move, and about its origins as a pre-cinematic mass entertainment.
'The Last Tour' (2005) is set at the end of the Age of Spectacle, at a time when tourist attractions are about to be completely closed off to the public. In this fictional story 'a final voyage' over the Matterhorn is undertaken in a balloon.
'Travelling Amazonia' (2006) is centered around the Trans-amazonia highway, a massive project devised by the Brazilian government in the seventies to establish a route that would bisect the Amazon forest and connect the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts. The objective of Hugonnier and her team is to build a dolly and tracks with the same materials as were employed in building the highway and which came from the local industries which were generated. The construction of the Transamazonia generated an industry around the extraction of natural resources like metal, wood and rubber. Hugonnier and her team make use of these materials to build a dolly and some tracks to realise upon the very same road a "travelling shot". The purpose is to film a linear 'travelling shot' which re-enacts the linearity of the Transamazonia highway and which recalls the pioneering ideals that this colonialist project embodied.
For more information about Marine Hugonnier's work please visit the website of her London gallery, Max Wigram.
Marine Hugonnier
Until 15 April
SMAK Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst
Citadelpark, B-9000 Ghent
T: +32 (0)9 221 17 03
'Travelling Amazonia' (2006)
'The Last Tour' (2005)
'Ariana' (2003)
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