‘Le Bisou’ is a video triptych about a meeting of 2 people. The texts have been improvised – the actors say aloud what comes to their mind while walking in the city. I improvised the piano music too. The sounds were recorded in the streets of Charleroi on just another normal day.
First, the central panel
When finally the faces touch, they kiss. This kiss is neither passionate nor squeamish. It’s almost the kiss of a couple who have known each other for a long time and who show confidence in their mutual feelings. Although nothing says that they know each other.
In slow motion all the time, the movement becomes even more intimate, as the light discretely leaves their faces through their own shadow at the crucial moment.
Then, the side panels
The entire bed is visible. The actors hardly move. Parts of their bodies stick out of the sheets, as if they had just had a nightmare, or as if they had been too hot under the duvet. Are they sleeping? Are they dreaming? They may remember the central part as something in the past, or the central part may be a foreshadowing of what will happen in the future….
And finally, the sound
The images are aesthetic and universal. But the text that the actors improvise seems trivial. Normally we never get so “deep” into the unfiltered thoughts of others and attribute the others a ‘higher’ and more organized level of intellectual activity. This is probably part of the area between the real and the imaginary of our vision of the other.
Third picture: © Tim van den Oudenhoven (exhibition view at // MoNo // - detail)
This work only exists in French
