LE PETIT JEUNE HOMME DE BINCHE

Carnival in the Belgian town of Binche is not just a revel and an orgy. It’s subject to strict rules. Every male inhabitant of Binche can become ’Gilles’. Every Gilles puts on a colourful suit and is accompanied by a drummer wherever he goes. On top of this the Gilles all wear the same wax mask during the afternoon of carnival. They gladly forget their own person -because it’s quite an honour to be a Gilles in Binche- in order to shape a collective surplus value. Vromman shows these rituals through a subtle confusion of the electronical with the real, of the private with the public. He uses the mechanical medium of ’video’ to record something lively and direct. As if to emphasize this ambiguity he places part of his documentary in a frame on screen, between two souvenir puppets representing a Gilles from Binche. In this manner he made a ’souvenir de Binche’, or rather a ’Souvenez-vous de Binche’.