DU NOIR DANS LE VERT

This video was created for the exhibition Speelhoven ’04 and was inspired by the cabane which artist Hans Op De Beeck developed in situ in 2001 for that same exhibition series. The work sits there like a drab observatory, with a view on two walnuts, lost in the middle of a vast, green meadow. One is alive, towering high above the caved-in remains of the other, dead tree. Around this almost romantic image the Martin created a story of their own, and as usual the idea of ‘duality’ plays an important role. Two sisters are roaming around in a meadow, around two trees. They chop the dead tree to pieces and take the wood to a pool, deep in the surrounding forest. At night, by the moonlight, they dress in hermetically white costumes and paint the stump that is left over, as if this were part of some ritual. They are observed from the window of the cabane by a(nother?) woman. ’Du Noir Dans Le Vert’ develops like a multi-layered exploration of the space between ‘them’ and ‘the other’, the confusion between ‘the genuine’ and ‘the copy’, between reality and fiction. Similarly to such directors as Lynch (’Mulholland Dr.’), Bergman (’Persona’) and Hitchcock (’Vertigo’) they explore the concept of ‘identity’ in their work, amidst an illusory world of reflections and fusions. The Electro-acoustic soundtrack is by the Brussels’ sound artist Arnaud Jacobs (Missfit).