WHEN RAYS
The tools Gérard Giachi 1 uses are multiple because they are meant to serve an idea or a project and are not used for themselves, the strong predominance of video doesn't exclude neither sculpture, neither drawing nor painting, performance, misused ready made or invented objects (even architecture), photography etc... Nevertheless, these objects are always pushed far beyond their original functions as in the project: "impressions from the other side and those whom are found there" : the terrestrial glbe is pierced by an endless well, bottomless with video screens, dug between France and its precise antipode: New Zealand. - Someone leaning over the well in Marseille sees and converses with the person leaning over the well at the same moment in Aukland and reciprocally - The two devices being linked together by direct and simultaneous satellite transmissions (a first version with the recorded video "Impression des îles Chatham" was produced and exhibited at the Musée Cantini in 1986).
Giachi considers the creation process of this work as the preparation for a real exploration where the new territories to be discovered, conquered are of a virtual, conceptual kind. Here, For a Glbal Vision (generic term referring to all the projects and performances), rays replace vessels but as for Pytheas or Christopher Colomb, chartering the ships for such an incredible crossing requires numerous approaches that prove the utility of such and expedition. The artist becomes a "representative" because Art deals mainly with problems of representation, this performance on a daily basis enhances the creation process as a "work of art" in itself.
At last, as with Manzoni's pedestal of the world, the terrestrial glbe in its totality is perceived as a work of art, "For a Glbal Vision", as an enormous metaphore on a world scale, proposes a parallel analysis of celestial bodies / human bodies - travelling through the body and its orifices: mouth and anus - the penetration of these orifices - the earth glbe and the eye glbe - openings carried out on these bodies: wounds and boring, trepanation and wells, operation and caves, autopsy etc... Gérard Giachi, 1995
NOTES Note 1 : Myself.
Image 1 : "Vincent Le Blanc's (from Marseille) peregrination to the four corners of the world", 1578 -1584.
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