The installation Fleuve presents four views of London, filmed from the Thames. The images, captured at different times of day, offer glimpses of the Palace of Westminster, the City business district, City Hall, where the London Assembly sits, and the Tate Modern museum.
These architectural monuments represent four forms of power: cultural, administrative, financial, and political. They all share the distinctive feature of being located near water. This is a characteristic common to many prestigious sites, and one that particularly caught Marcel Dinahet's attention.
To create these images, Marcel Dinahet made several trips to London to scout locations and walked along the banks of the Thames at low tide, discovering the beaches bordering the river. He placed his camera in a waterproof case and let it float along with the current. We can guess the different times of day from the light that permeates these “highly pictorial” images: the morning mist over the Tate Modern, night falling near Westminster. Similarly, the river ripples as boats pass by, which we can sense without seeing. By placing the camera at waterline level, the videos create a sense of disorientation and instability as the waves rise and fall. Prestigious buildings that appear very stable are shown in the images as if they were being carried away, or even engulfed by the water. This impression of immersion is accentuated by the amplified underwater sound.
Marcel Dinahet revisits a technique he experimented with in 2000 in Flottaisons and more recently in Strasbourg. These works readily leave room for chance. But his camera, even when left to the fluctuations of the water, is not placed there without reason. The artist films an “in-between” space, between water and land, “nature and culture”; in which contrasting elements, aquatic and architectural, coexist.
This series can be seen as a work on landscape, in the sense that even though the artist leaves his camera suspended at the mercy of the waves, he chooses a point of view. In this Fleuve series, as in Flottaisons, Marcel Dinahet deepens his exploration of the idea of interface and boundary.
