Totoro, this unique space in Ivry, made it possible to gather three parts of BBY’s work. From this unprecedented dialogue between his works was born Là où il faut [Wherever it should be] for a photographic photo play in three acts: Passage non obligé, Jeux de scène and Un temps pour tout.
Act 2: Jeux de scène [Stage performances]
With BBY, photography is an art of tranquility. A gentle serenity that takes you by the hand, by the eyes, to take you as far as your generosity can discover its horizons. Because with BBY there are no limits, everything is outlined in terms of the horizon. Act II from Là où il faut, his new exhibit in the form of a photographicplay: Jeux de scène. Here is an act made of seven scenes, each marked with the seal of the uniform.
The uniform is not here a limit imposed on the body. It is not crossing, but postage. The uniform is costume or custom. We are not yet talking about transgression, even less about subversion.
The reflection on temporality returns here as a leitmotif. The time arises. A concern for the break that will be found in Act III, Un temps pour tout [A time for everything], devoted to pinhole photography. There, in the gentle flow of time, it is the device that will take its time.
Here in Jeux de scène, beyond the effervescent movement of existence, the actor takes the time to ask himself. But this is not a break for the photographer. And therein lies the genius of BBY, not capturing the “moment of eternity” dear to Doisneau, but this fleeting gesture which is expressed when, in a somewhat trivial way, we sometimes say: “I don’t give a fuck. ”
What is the ontological nature of this “I don’t give a fuck”? Is it a combination of resignation, weariness or a final burst of individuality in a world formatted for the group? Not at all. The images of BBY are far too subtle to stick to the observation of faulty resignation. Between a form subjected to fatality and the radical subversion, there is a medium path that the inhabitants of Marseilles the Phocaean express by this strange formula, coming from the archaeological depths of the ancient Greek: “It connects me!” “Between the active voice and the passive voice, here is the average voice which consists in first undergoing an action to immediately refuse to undergo it while ending up interacting with it.
Each scene of this act is related to this coherence. With Jeux de scène, we are here in a form of peaceful radicalism, a generous and inclusive radicalism.
What does BBY tell us? That there is a world posed by the thousand and one artifacts of modern society. That beyond what exists, being, in its flesh, in its individuality, is never completely absent, even if it is never quite present. BBY understands like nobody the middle way of existence, where there is no longer any room for appearing. The actors of Jeux de scène are wrapped in a sometimes dreary daily life. But the emptiness of an existence is not filled by the institutionalization of the world. Here appears, like a gushing out, an ultimate fragment of light, where the individual can still exist in the peaceful radicalism of his being!
Basically, BBY speaks to us of individual consciousness lost in a totalitarian dimension where the infinite weight of the sadness of things would act as a life accelerator. We are not here in subversion, but in a liberation, pushed like a final cry in the service of individuality.
The GonZo Man
Practical information
Bertrand Bonnefoy, Là où il faut
Toroto, Ivry-sur-Seine
M° Pierre et Marie Curie L7
Saturdays February 29th, March 7th and 14th, 4-10pm or by appointment
More information on: http://www.bonnefoy.biz
Information
Totoro
15 rue Jules Ferry, 94200 Ivry-sur-Seine, France
February 29, 2020 to March 14, 2020
