cold blood

Video and Installation made during a residency in Johannesburg, text excerpted from the IFAAS catalogue.

What struck me the most in Johannesburg was the atmosphere, that of a city in change. It's an undecided situation where everything can still crumble. We can feel poverty, misery, suffering and especially violence. White people confine themselves to their golden ghettos of barbed wires. It's a kind of morbid state where people protect themselves and shut their eyes. The CBD is crawling with homeless people busy living their lives or surviving. How should one rebuild one's life after having spent so many years under the yoke? How should one use this new freedom? I was struck by the perpetual presence of violence, threat and danger. The fact that this violence is understandable doesn't prevent it from creating destruction, "liquefaction". For this project, I intend to symbolize violence in general (whether crime, rape, AIDS ravages, racism) via firearms. I want to mould ice guns. […] Inside these ice guns, I will place a red cap. […] The guns will slowly melt and turn into a pool of blood.

For me, violence is what creates liquefaction. Violence destroys structure, that of a country but also that of a living being reduced to blood, ashes, bones, something shapeless. One of the characteristics of ice is its coldness, the fact that it is as cold as the metal used to make firearms; as cold as indifference. By hearing about crime and seeing people suffering every day, one becomes insensitive. The other characteristic of ice is that it melts and it is ephemeral, like the present changing situation of Johannesburg."