leckey def

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|7 Guggenheim Museum-Cinema-in-the-Round | 2008 Impression jet d'encre sous plexiglas 91,4 x 66 x 6,3 cm Courtesy l'artiste, Gavin Brown's enterprise (New York) Crédits : Mark Leckey ¬ Jill Gasparina Music floats around in the aether of the WorldWide Web, waiting to be downloaded 1 « It’s great to do something that has some kind of effect on British culture ! This is good ! » C’est par ces quelques mots que le lauréat Mark Leckey introduisit son (bref) discours de remerciements, lors de la très hollywoodienne cérémonie de remise du Turner Prize en 2008. Bien que la présence scénique de Sir Nicholas Serota, directeur de la Tate Gallery et président du jury, ne soit pas aussi édifiante que celle d’un Robert De Niro ou d’un Sean Connery, on se serait cru quelques instants dans le monde enchanté du cinéma. Il se trouve que l’œuvre de Leckey est nourrie de la culture cinématographique, dont il s’approprie régulièrement l’imagerie (Vertigo d’Alfred Hitchcock, Sunshine de Danny Boyle, Titanic de James Cameron, etc.) ou les techniques, notamment lorsqu’il réalise des zoetropes – ces jouets optiques inventés au XIX e siècle par William George Horner et Simon Stampfer, utilisant la perception rétinienne pour produire des images en mouvement – ou bien extrait de l’histoire du cinéma d’animation des figures comme celle de Félix le chat, qui a fini par devenir une sorte de mascotte de son travail. L’artiste a pour habitude de mettre en ligne des trailers de ses expositions. En 2008, avec Cinema-in-the-Round, il livre un essai vidéo sur les liens entre son œuvre et l’histoire du cinéma (mais aussi avec celles de la télévision et de la sculpture). Il a par ailleurs emprunté le titre de son exposition « Industrial Light and Magic » – qui fut présentée au Consortium à Dijon en 2007 et lui valut de recevoir le Turner Prize – à la célèbre société américaine d’effets spéciaux ILM, filiale de Lucasfilm Ltd. “It’s great to do something that has some kind of effect on British culture! This is good!” It was with these words, uttered at the very Hollywoodesque 2008 Turner Prize awards ceremony, that the winner Mark Leckey introduced his (short) speech of thanks. Even though the stage presence of Tate director and jury chairman Sir Nicholas Serota may not be as enlightening as that of actors like Robert De Niro or Sean Connery, for a few moments you would have thought you were in the spellbinding film world. It so happens that Leckey’s work is nurtured on film culture, whose imagery he regularly appropriates (Alfred Hitch- cock’s Vertigo, Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, James Cameron’s Titanic, etc.), as well as its techniques, especially when he produces zoetropes – these optical toys invented in the 19 th century by William George Horner and Simon Stampfer using retinal perception to produce moving images – or extracts from the history of animated film figures like Felix the Cat, which ended up becoming a kind of mascot of his work. The artist is in the habit of putting trailers for his shows online. In 2008, with Cinema-in-the-Round, he came up with a video essay about the links between his work and the history of film (but also with the histories of television and sculpture). He incidentally borrowed the title for his exhibition “Industrial Light and Magic” – which was held at the Consortium in 2007 and earned him the Turner Prize – from the famous American special effects company ILM, a subsidiary of Lucasfilm Ltd. « Music speaks to everyone and art doesn't 2 » 1 «La musique flotte dans l'éther du World Wide Web en attendant d'être téléchargée.» David Toop, Ocean of Sound, Kargo, 2004, p. 18. 2 Mark Leckey in Coline Milliard, « The Domestication of Mark Leckey: A Q&A With the Turner Prize Winner About His Quest Not to Make Art », Artinfo UK, 23 mai 2011.

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  • |7

    Guggenheim Museum-Cinema-in-the-Round | 2008

    Impression jet d'encre sous plexiglas

    91,4 x 66 x 6,3 cm

    Courtesy l'artiste, Gavin Brown's enterprise (New York)

    Crdits : Mark Leckey

    Jill Gasparina

    Music floats around in the aether of the WorldWide Web, waiting to be downloaded1

    Its great to do something that has some kind of effect on British culture ! This is good ! Cest par ces quelques mots que le laurat Mark Leckey introduisit son (bref) discours de remerciements, lors de la trs hollywoodienne crmonie de remise du Turner Prize en 2008. Bien que la prsence scnique de Sir Nicholas Serota, directeur de la Tate Gallery et prsident du jury, ne soit pas aussi difiante que celle dun Robert De Niro ou dun Sean Connery, on se serait cru quelques instants dans le monde enchant du cinma.Il se trouve que luvre de Leckey est nourrie de la culture cinmatographique, dont il sapproprie rgulirement limagerie (Vertigo dAlfred Hitchcock, Sunshine de Danny Boyle, Titanic de James Cameron, etc.) ou les techniques, notamment lorsquil ralise des zoetropes ces jouets optiques invents au XIXe sicle par William George Horner et Simon Stampfer, utilisant la perception rtinienne pour produire des images en mouvement ou bien extrait de lhistoire du cinma danimation des figures comme celle de Flix le chat, qui a fini par devenir une sorte de mascotte de son travail. Lartiste a pour habitude de mettre en ligne des trailers de ses expositions. En 2008, avec Cinema-in-the-Round, il livre un essai vido sur les liens entre son uvre et lhistoire du cinma (mais aussi avec celles de la tlvision et de la sculpture). Il a par ailleurs emprunt le titre de son exposition Industrial Light and Magic qui fut prsente au Consortium Dijon en 2007 et lui valut de recevoir le Turner Prize la clbre socit amricaine deffets spciaux ILM, filiale de Lucasfilm Ltd.

    Its great to do something that has some kind of effect on British culture! This is good! It was with these words, uttered at the very Hollywoodesque 2008 Turner Prize awards ceremony, that the winner Mark Leckey introduced his (short) speech of thanks. Even though the stage presence of Tate director and jury chairman Sir Nicholas Serota may not be as enlightening as that of actors like Robert De Niro or Sean Connery, for a few moments you would have thought you were in the spellbinding film world.It so happens that Leckeys work is nurtured on film culture, whose imagery he regularly appropriates (Alfred Hitch-cocks Vertigo, Danny Boyles Sunshine, James Camerons Titanic, etc.), as well as its techniques, especially when he produces zoetropes these optical toys invented in the 19th century by William George Horner and Simon Stampfer using retinal perception to produce moving images or extracts from the history of animated film figures like Felix the Cat, which ended up becoming a kind of mascot of his work. The artist is in the habit of putting trailers for his shows online. In 2008, with Cinema-in-the-Round, he came up with a video essay about the links between his work and the history of film (but also with the histories of television and sculpture). He incidentally borrowed the title for his exhibition Industrial Light and Magic which was held at the Consortium in 2007 and earned him the Turner Prize from the famous American special effects company ILM, a subsidiary of Lucasfilm Ltd.

    Music speaks to everyone and art doesn't 2

    1 La musique

    flotte dans l'ther

    du World Wide

    Web en attendant

    d'tre tlcharge.

    David Toop, Ocean

    of Sound, Kargo,

    2004, p. 18.

    2 Mark Leckey in

    Coline Milliard,

    The Domestication

    of Mark Leckey:

    A Q&A With the

    Turner Prize Winner

    About His Quest

    Not to Make Art ,

    Artinfo UK, 23 mai

    2011.

  • 8| |9

    Cependant, dans une logique pop bien comprise, cest la musique qui a demble port chez lui la promesse dun monde culturel plus accessible : Quand je suis all la fac, je voulais faire des peintures murales, jtais obsd par Diego Rivera. Je voulais faire un art populiste. Jtais trs suspicieux lgard de lart prtentieux et sur-intellectualis3 , explique Leckey, avant de prciser : Je pense que je cherchais juste un langage qui tait hors des institutions. Et je crois que je suis toujours intress par ce qui peut accomplir cela, ce qui peut avoir un effet par del les trs troites frontires du monde de lart4. Comme de nombreux artistes avant lui, il est all chercher dans la musique un univers suffisamment tranger lart, plus festif, excitant et vivant que le cortge inanim des uvres trnant dans les galeries5. Il poursuit cette stratgie de sortie (de fuite ?) du monde de lart, prsent que sa pratique se focalise sur lusage dinternet et les mythologies autour de la circulation de linformation6.Sa culture personnelle sest en grande partie constitue par-tir de la musique et des diffrentes pratiques qui lentourent. Autrefois casual et raver, Leckey sest plus tardivement impli-qu dans deux groupes, DonAteller et Jack Too Jack. Force est de constater par ailleurs que la plupart de ses uvres

    tournent autour du son et de la musique : de la ralisation de posters utilisant des photographies de musiciens clbres comme Little Richard celle de sculptures sonores (Borbo-rygmus), dont certaines donnent lieu des performances, linstar de la srie des BigBoxStatueAction au cours desquelles lartiste confronte une sculpture appartenant la grande his-toire moderniste (Epstein, Moore) un sound system activ lors dvnements relevant la fois de la crmonie et du concert. Leckey chante aussi. Lune de ses dernires vidos, GreenScreenRefrigerator (2010), inspire par lcoute de Roadrunner de Jonathan Richman, fonctionne comme une chanson lyrique porte par un frigo Samsung la voix autotune7. Lartiste sest rcemment fait interviewer par Jarvis Cocker sur la BBC (ce qui tend lui confrer une stature de pop star de lart contemporain) et Nick Cave lui remit le Turner Prize en 2008. Symboliquement, cest par la musique que Leckey est revenu lart en 1999 avec son hit, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, montage vido dune quinzaine de minutes constitu dimages trouves de ftes, de raves et autres soires. Il y dresse un portrait chronologique de la scne club anglaise, de la fin des annes 1970 au dbut des annes 1990, priode concidant avec sa jeunesse. la northern soul succde la house, puis les premires raves, lacid house et lre Madchester, avec leur cortge de tribus urbaines spcifiques. Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore renvoie lhistoire des casuals, qui trouve son origine au Royaume-Uni au dbut des annes 1980. Certains hooligans se mettent alors porter, au lieu des couleurs de leur club, du sportswear de luxe (Fiorucci, Ellesse, Cerrutti, Sergio Tacchini, Fila, Lacoste, etc.). Ces tenues soignes et chics leur permettent de ne pas attirer lattention de la police et dinfiltrer plus facilement les groupes de supporteurs ennemis.En englobant la musique et les pratiques culturelles, vestimen-taires, gestuelles, sociales, festives et narcotiques qui laccom-pagnent, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore fonctionne comme un essai sur la culture underground8 . Luvre ne relve cepen-dant pas de lanthropologie visuelle, et Leckey ne tente pas de livrer une version vido des crits de Dick Hebdige sur les subcultures anglaises. Les images sont manipules, ralenties, rptes, mises en boucle (au point de ressembler parfois des GIF prhistoriques). Fiorucci montre ainsi quel point, comme il lexpliquait rcemment, [s]a comprhension du sampling et de lappropriation vient davantage de la musique9 .

    3 Entretien par

    Julia Peyton-Jones

    et Hans-Ulrich

    Obrist, etc., See

    We Assemble,

    Londres/Cologne,

    Serpentine Gallery/

    Walther Knig,

    2011, p. 33.

    4 Ibid., p. 34.

    5 Voir John A.

    Walker, Cross-

    Overs: Art into

    Pop/Pop into Art,

    Londres, Comedia /

    Methuen, 1987.

    6 Entretien avec

    Brian Droitcour,

    Interview with

    Mark Leckey ,

    rhizome.org, 30

    septembre 2009.

    7 Its not like a

    cut-up technique,

    its more like how

    I construct a song

    or a track , mail

    lauteur, 23

    septembre 2011.

    8 See We

    Assemble, op. cit.,

    p. 46.

    9 Ibid., p. 34.

    In a well grasped pop logic, however, it is music which right away brought him the promise of a more acces-sible cultural world: When I first went to college, I went there to make murals, I was obsessed with Diego Rivera. I wanted to make populist art. I was very suspicious of pretentious and over-intellectualised art,3 explains Leckey, before adding more specifically: I guess I was looking for some kind of language that could exist out-side of the institutions. I guess I am still interested in something that can do that, something that can have an effect beyond the quite narrow margins of the art world." 4 Like many artists before him, he went to music in search of a world sufficiently removed from art, more festive, exciting and alive than the lifeless succession of works lording it in galleries.5 He is pursuing this exit strategy (or is it an escape?) from the art world, now that his activities are focusing on using the Internet and the mythologies around the circulation of information.6

    His personal culture is largely made up of music and the different practices surrounding it. Leckey, who used to be a casual and a raver, has latterly been involved in two groups, Donateller and Jack Too Jack. It must also be

    noted that most of his works gravitate around sound and music: from the production of posters using photographs of famous musicians such as Little Richard, to that of sound sculptures (Borborygmus), some of which give rise to performances, like the BigBoxStatueAction series, during which the artist puts a sculpture belonging to the great history of modernism (Epstein, Moore) in front of a sound system that is activated during events involving both ceremony and concert. Leckey sings, too. One of his latest videos, GreenScreenRefrigerator (2010), inspired by listening to Jonathan Richmans Roadrunner, works like a lyrical song performed by a Samsung Fridge with a self-tuned voice.7

    The artist was recently interviewed by Jarvis Cocker on the BBC (which tends to give him the stature of a pop star of contemporary art) and Nick Cave handed him the Turner Prize in 2008. Symbolically, it is through music that Leckey returned to art in 1999 with his hit, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, a video montage lasting about fifteen minutes made up of found footage of parties, raves and other nocturnal pastimes. In it he draws up a chrono-logical portrait of the English club scene, from the late

    3 Interview with

    Mark Leckey by

    Julia Peyton-Jones

    and Hans-Ulrich

    Obrist, in See

    We Assemble,

    London/Cologne,

    Serpentine Gallery/

    Walther Knig,

    2011, p. 33.

    4 Ibid., p. 34.

    5 See John A.

    Walker, Cross-

    Overs: Art into

    Pop/Pop into Art,

    London, Comedia/

    Methuen, 1987.

    6 Brian Droitcour,

    Interview with

    Mark Leckey",

    rhizome.org, 30

    septembre 2009.

    7 Its not like a

    cut-up technique,

    its more like how

    I construct a song

    or a track, email

    to the author, 23

    September 2011.

    Little Richard | 2003

    Poster offset

    121,9 x 90,2 cm

    Courtesy l'artiste, Gavin Brown's enterprise (New York)

    Crdits : Mark Leckey

    Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore | 1999

    DVD 15 ' (still)

    Courtesy l'artiste, Gavin Brown's enterprise (New York)

    Crdits : Mark Leckey

  • 1970s to the early 1990s, a period that overlapped with his youth. Northern soul is followed by house, then the first raves, acid house and the Madchester period, with their procession of specific urban tribes. Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore refers to the history of casual music, which originated in the UK in the early 1980s. At that time, instead of sporting the colours of their clubs, certain hooligans started wearing luxury sportswear (Fiorucci, Ellesse, Cerruti, Sergio Tacchini, Fila, Lacoste, etc.). These chic and well-groomed clothes helped them not to attract the attention of the police, and made it easier to infiltrate enemy supporter groups.By encompassing music and the various cultural, sar-torial, gestural, social, festive and narcotic habits going hand-in-hand with it, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore works like an essay on the underground culture.8 But the work is not the result of visual anthropology, and Leckey does not try to deliver a video version of Dick Hebdiges wri-tings on English subcultures. The images are manipu-lated, slowed down, repeated, and looped (to the point where they at times look like prehistoric GIFs. Fiorucci thus shows to what extent as he recently explained [his] understanding of sampling and appropriation came more from music.9

    In 1980, with the album Fourth World vol.1: Possible Musics composed and produced with Brian Eno Jon Hassell invented the idea of fourth world music, combining influences hailing from classical musical traditions and a technological approach. In 1994, he founded the Bluescreen group, whose name makes reference to the visual inlay technique used in film, making it possible to juxtapose a subject on any kind of background, and permitting spectacular associations, be they Surrealist or exotic (this procedure is also used to produce most publicity images showing a model in a swimsuit on a paradise beach. Hassell thus adopted this metaphor in musical ways, creating magical tex-tures in sound, making something familiar sound fresh and exotic by separating it from its background and combining it with something new and startling.10

    This description, for which we are indebted to the English musician and critic David Toop, applies perfectly to Leckeys GreenScreen. If Fiorucci deals with the under-

    ground culture, GreenScreen represents an essay on intelligent technologies and all-pervading information technology, operating by way of strange associations, and juxtapositions. In the video, the image of a large black high-tech Samsung fridge is inlaid on various backgrounds, based on a principle which is above all analog. Leckey uses this technique to compare different objects and elements whose form but not their scale is akin to that of the fridge (a black parallelepiped), like a tower, a tree, an energy drink can, or a telephone. He thus delivers nothing less than a lesson in comparative sculpture. In the last few minutes of the video, after a quite lengthy sequence in which the fridge describes its own way of functioning in particular its technique for producing cold , the artist reverts to the principle of the greenscreen and produces a psychedelic montage where the household appliance appears against a backdrop of space images. This gradual crescendo forms a lyrical manifesto where the artists technological enthusiasm mingles with his attempt to produce a dematerialized sculpture (in the tradition of Cinema-in-the-Round), and represent intelligent, but invisible, environments, in which we henceforth evolve.11

    Like Hassell, with the green screen Leckey has adopted not a musical but a visual metaphor, enabling him to create magical textures, and play with forms of exoti-cism and novel effects, as well as explore the technolo-gical world we are living in. The idea with the fridge is that its a sculpture to me, but its a sculpture that can talk. So what happens to sculpture once it stops being a dumb thing and it can respond to you? This seems like a massive change to me. Its an enormous paradigm shift. Were no longer about making objects, we have to see objects in terms of some other kind of relationship to ourselves, more as something that we share the world with.12 Were technological beings, he still explains. This is what we do, this is what we are. We use tools and thats what makes a human. Were surrounded by technology now, we live in an ambient environment, technology is creating this field, this visual and audio field.13 To this ambient technological state Leckey thus responds through a dematerialized art an approach as such contrasting with that of advertising people responsible for promoting mobile telephones and tele-

    8 See We

    Assemble, op. cit.,

    p. 46.

    9 Ibid., p. 34.

    10 David Toop,

    op. cit. p. 174.

    11 See Anthony

    Dunne and Fiona

    Raby, Design Noir.

    The Secret Life of

    Electronic Objects,

    Basel, Birkhuser,

    2001.

    12 See We

    Assemble, op. cit.,

    p. 37.

    13 Ibid.

    BigBoxStatueAction | 2003

    Performance la Tate Britain

    Courtesy l'artiste, Gavin Brown's enterprise (New York), Tate Britain (Londres)

  • 12| |13

    En 1980, Jon Hassell invente avec lalbum Fourth World vol. 1 : Possible Musics compos et produit avec Brian Eno lide de musique du quatrime monde qui combine influences issues de traditions musicales classiques et approche techno-logique. En 1994, il fonde le groupe Bluescreen, dont le nom fait rfrence la technique dincrustation visuelle utilise au cinma, permettant de juxtaposer un sujet sur nimporte quel fond, autorisant des associations spectaculaires, surra-listes ou exotiques (procd utilis par ailleurs pour produire la plupart des images de publicit montrant un modle en maillot de bain sur une plage paradisiaque). Hassell adopte ainsi cette mtaphore de manire musicale pour crer des textures sonores magiques, faisant rsonner le familier de la nouveaut et de lexotisme en lisolant de son contexte et en le combinant des lments neufs et surprenants10 .Cette description, que lon doit au musicien et critique anglais David Toop, sapplique merveille au GreenScreen de Leckey. Si Fiorucci porte sur la culture underground, GreenScreen constitue un essai sur les technologies intelligentes et linfor-matique ambiante, fonctionnant par associations tranges et juxtapositions. Dans la vido, limage dun grand frigo Samsung noir high tech est incruste sur divers fonds selon un principe avant tout analogique. Leckey utilise cette technique afin de comparer divers objets et lments dont la forme mais non lchelle se rapproche de celle du frigo (un paralllpipde noir) comme une tour, un arbre, une canette denergy drink ou un tlphone. Il livre ainsi une vritable leon de sculpture compare. Dans les dernires minutes de la vido, aprs une squence assez longue au cours de laquelle le frigo dcrit son propre mode de fonctionnement notamment sa tech-nique de production du froid , lartiste revient au principe du greenscreen et livre un montage psychdlique dans lequel lappareil lectromnager apparat sur fond dimages de lespace. Ce lent crescendo forme un manifeste lyrique o lenthousiasme technologique de lartiste se mle sa tentative de production dune sculpture dmatrialise (dans la ligne de Cinema-In-The-Round) et de reprsentation des environnements intelligents, mais invisibles, dans lesquels nous voluons dsormais11.

    Comme Hassell, Leckey a adopt avec lcran vert une mta-phore non pas musicale mais visuelle, qui lui permet de crer des textures magiques, de jouer de formes dexotisme et deffets de nouveaut, mais aussi dexplorer le monde tech-nologique dans lequel nous vivons. Lide avec le frigo, cest

    quil sagit mes yeux dune sculpture, mais dune sculpture qui parle. Alors, que se passe-t-il une fois quelle cesse dtre une chose bte et quelle peut te rpondre ? Selon moi, il sagit dun immense bouleversement. Cest un norme changement de paradigme. Nous navons plus produire des objets, nous devons regarder les objets dans le prisme de la relation que nous entretenons avec eux, davantage comme quelque chose avec quoi nous partageons le monde12. Nous sommes des tres technologiques, explique-t-il encore. Cest ce que nous faisons, cest ce que nous sommes. Nous utilisons des outils et cest ce qui dfinit un humain. Nous sommes prsent encercls par la technologie, nous vivons dans un environ-nement ambient, la technologie cre ce champ, ce champ visuel et audio13. cet tat technologique ambient, Leckey rpond donc par un art dmatrialis dmarche en cela oppose celle des publicitaires en charge de promouvoir la tlphonie mobile et les tlcommunications qui prtendent rematrialiser le monde en illustrant leurs spots au moyen de musiques acoustiques, et vivent une vraie romance avec le renouveau folk, de Grizzly Bear Herman Dune en passant par Keren Ann. Plus que limagerie visuelle ou sonore (si une telle expression a un sens), ce sont donc nos modes de relation technologique au monde, et limaginaire exotique port par ce quatrime monde enchant o les choses parlent (et mme chantent), qui fournissent lartiste britannique le point de dpart dune grande part de son travail actuel (comme de la tradition musicale ambient). Leckey se saisit ainsi de la musique pour sa capacit gnrer des formes culturelles, mais aussi en ce quelle sappuie, comme les arts visuels selon lui14, sur un dispositif technologique et des moyens de communication. Dans Fiorucci, on ne peut pas suivre les mouvements des danseurs et on ne peut que difficilement identifier certains morceaux classiques du clubbing, totalement transforms par lartiste (un principe de montage et daltration utiliss outrance par DonAteller). Lensemble frappe surtout par son caractre mlancolique et sa lenteur, aux antipodes de lnergie qui animait cette jeunesse dfonce et hdoniste que lon voit danser en boucle. La vido nessaie pas de mimer lexprience de la danse, ou dentraner le spectateur dans une quelconque transe. Elle dgage au contraire une aura spectrale. Quand je regarde Fiorucci aujourdhui, jai limpres-sion que cest un film de fantmes. Ctait suppos tre une clbration de la vie et de la vitalit, mais il y a quelque chose

    communications claiming to be re-materializing the world by illustrating their spots with acoustic forms of music, which are enjoying a real romance with the folk revival, from Grizzly Bear to Herman Dune, by way of Keren Ann.

    More than visual and acoustic imagery (if such an expression makes any sense), it is thus our modes of technological relationship to the world, and the exotic imagination conveyed by this fourth enchanted world where things talk (and even sing), which provide the British artist with the springboard for a large share of his current work (as with the ambient musical tradition). So Leckey grasps music for its capacity to give rise to cultu-ral forms, but also insomuch as it relies just like the visual arts in his view14 on a technological system and means of communication (from this viewpoint, his video

    work reminds us of Nam June Paiks Global Groove15).In Fiorucci, it is impossible to follow the dancers move-ments and it is only with difficulty that we can identify certain classical clubbing pieces, completely transformed by the artist (a principle of editing and alteration used to the hilt by DonAteller). The whole thing is striking above all for its melancholy character and its slowness, the very opposite of the energy driving that stoned and hedonistic youth we see dancing in a loop. The video does not attempt to imitate the dance experience, or draw the onlooker into any kind of trance. On the contrary, it gives off a ghostlike aura. When I look Fiorucci now, it feels like a ghost film. It was meant to be a celebration of life and vitality, but theres something haunted about the whole thing. Theres something ghostly about it,16 Leckey explains.

    11 Voir Anthony

    Dunne et Fiona

    Raby, Design Noir.

    The Secret Life of

    Electronic Objects,

    Ble, Birkhuser,

    2001.

    10 David Toop,

    op. cit., p. 174.

    12 See We

    Assemble,

    op. cit., p. 37.

    13 Ibid.

    14 Coline Milliard,

    op. cit.

    15 Thanks to

    Pierre Leguillon for

    having suggested

    this idea to me.

    16 See We

    Assemble, op. cit.,

    p. 35.

    14 Coline Milliard,

    op. cit.

    Borborygmus | 2008

    Vue de lexposition Mark Leckey Resident , Klnischer Kunstverein (Cologne), 2008

    Courtesy Galerie Buchholz (Berlin, Cologne)

  • |1514|

    Fiorucci is more the outcome of personal memory than generational testimony. It must be looked at like a highly subjective cluster talking about the melancholy feeling we may experience when confronted with memories of our past youth. The phantom-like dimension the artist talks about is in fact that of a bygone day and age. But this sense of temporal remove is doubled up by a technological kind of remove. The poor quality of the images and effects used shows that Fiorucci belongs to the age of analog video which, while not that far away (1999), is nevertheless already no longer our age. In a secondary way, this video is also the product of a day and age when the Internet was still not operating like the vast popular and wild archive18 it has become, when we had to patiently collect materials which are nowadays acces-sible with just a few clicks an age which ended with the development of free video platforms like YouTube and Dailymotion, and more generally Web 2.0. In a word, the very nature of the perforce outmoded video image helps to accentuate the melancholy of Fiorucci and lend it that phantom-like dimension referred to by Leckey. The obsolescence of video production, publication and distribution technologies thus seems to predispose this

    medium to naturally generate still lifes. Many of the British artists sculptural and musical works can actually be looked at as technological still lifes. Like cultures, technologies pass. The high-tech look of GreenScreen is not a naive attempt to grab some kind of technological modernity, but the bright promise of its upcoming disap-pearance. A monument to the necessarily fleeting glory of Bluray, Samsung, Google and NASA.

    translated by Simon Pleasance & Fronza Woods

    18 Bettina Funcke,

    Pop or Populus,

    Berlin, Sternberg

    Press, 2010, p. 163.

    dhant dans tout cela15 , raconte Leckey. Fiorucci relve plus de la mmoire personnelle que du tmoignage gnrationnel. Il doit tre regard comme une constellation hautement subjective qui parle du sentiment mlancolique que lon peut prouver face aux souvenirs de sa jeunesse passe. La dimension fantomatique dont parle lartiste est de fait celle dune poque rvolue. Mais ce sen-timent dloignement temporel est redoubl dune distance dordre technologique. La qualit pauvre des images et des effets utiliss montre que Fiorucci appartient lre de la vido analogique qui, si elle nest pas si loin de nous (1999), nest dj pourtant plus la ntre. Accessoirement, cette vido est aussi le produit dune poque o Internet ne fonctionnait pas encore comme la vaste archive sauvage16 et populaire quelle est devenue, et o il fallait patiemment collecter des matriaux aujourdhui accessibles en quelques clics une

    poque qui a pris fin avec le dveloppement de plateformes dhbergement vido gratuit comme Youtube ou Dailymotion, et plus gnralement du web 2.0. En somme, la nature mme de limage vido, forcment dpasse, contribue accentuer la mlancolie de Fiorucci et lui confrer cette dimension fantomatique voque par Leckey. Lobsolescence des tech-nologies de production, ddition et de diffusion de la vido semble ainsi prdisposer ce mdium gnrer naturelle-ment des vanits. Beaucoup duvres sculpturales et musi-cales de lartiste britannique peuvent en fait tre regardes comme des vanits technologiques. Comme les cultures, les technologies passent. Le look high-tech de GreenScreen nest pas une tentative nave de saisir une quelconque modernit technologique, mais la promesse clatante de sa prochaine disparition. Un monument la gloire forcment phmre de Bluray, Samsung, Google et la NASA.

    15 Kaledoscope,

    op. cit.

    16 Bettina Funcke,

    Pop or Populus,

    Berlin, Sternberg

    Press, 2010, p. 163.

    GreenScreenRefrigeratorAction | 2010

    Rfrigrateur Samsung, dispositif de projection, vido digitale, fond vert, bombe de refroidissement (dtail)

    Dimensions variables

    Courtesy l'artiste, Gavin Brown's enterprise (New York)

    Crdits : Mark Leckey

    Sound System | 2002

    Sound system, amplis, haut-parleurs, platines, tourne-disques, disque actate

    259,1 x 259,1 x 96,5 cm

    Courtesy l'artiste, Gavin Brown's enterprise (New York)

    Crdits : Mark Leckey