FDC SATELLITE, Brussels, curated by Lilou Vidal
March 11 – May 15, 2010
01. Lisa Tan, Installation view – Les Samourais, 2010, Single channel video, lightstands, painted wood, projector,
3 min 36 seconds, sound, and Le Monde, June 29, 1967, 2010, cprint diptych installed on opposite sides of the room
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02. Excerpt from Les Samouraïs, 2010, single-channel video lightstands, painted wood, projector 3 min 36 sec, sound
03. Lisa Tan, Installation view – Les Samourais, 2010, Single channel video, lightstands, painted wood, projector,
3 min 36 seconds, sound, and Le Monde, June 29, 1967, 2010, cprint diptych installed on opposite sides of the room
04. Lisa Tan, Les Samouraïs (video still), 2010, single-channel video sculpture
05. Lisa Tan, Le Monde, June 29, 1967 (detail of front page), 2010, cprint diptych in artist's frame
06. Lisa Tan, Les Samouraïs (video still), 2010, single-channel video sculpture
DESCRIPTION
From the Press Release
FDC Satellite is pleased to present Lisa Tan’s first one-person exhibition in Brussels. Titled Les Samouraïs (2010), her 3-minute long video encapsulates the opening scene from the French film classic, Le Samouraï (1967), by Jean-Pierre Melville. Through image and sound, Tan’s piece makes an alteration to Melville’s original by adding one more bird to the opening scene. The simple gesture foils the film’s evaluation of isolation and interiority, while it fictitiously modifies an occurrence within historical reality.
An auteur to the fullest, Jean-Pierre Melville wrote, directed, and edited his films in Studios Jenner, situated in the 13th arrondissement in Paris. While finishing Le Samouraï, the studio was completely destroyed by a fire, and the bird from the film (which Melville had adopted) was the only casualty.
The film moves through the pending death of Alain Delon’s character—an assassin, who adheres to a life of solitude and detachment. In the opening scene, we observe his blank demeanor as he finishes a cigarette in bed, walks over to the bird, and then puts on a trench coat and hat, before closing the door behind him to face the world outside. The only creature the assassin truly connects with is his pet bird, a caged female finch that lives with him in his modest apartment.
Here, the video is presented as a sculpture. The projector and screen are mounted on standard studio light stands, referencing the film set and abstractly maintaining the scale of the birdcage within the assassin’s apartment.
Also on view is the diptych, Le Monde June 29, 1967 (2010). The images are taken from the front and back page of the newspaper, published on the day of Melville’s studio fire, and photographed on a wood floor. Reinforcing ideas about the expansion and contraction of larger histories against the everyday, the photographs are hung on opposite sides of the room, implying that what lies between the pages, lies within this space—or within every space.