'Tramage' adopts the photo and video technique of using elementary colours to simulate a profusion of hues; Guiton evokes a stream of associative images. He prickles the viewer's fantasy by presenting a relatively limited number of images in well-considered sequences. In his earlier works ('Partitür', 1983 and 'La Tache', 1986) associative series of images combined with associative sound patterns are characteristic of his style. In 'Tramage' Guiton lets the viewer dream on about a chance meeting with a gorgeous woman, unreachable in a passing streetcar, or 'tram'(!); that she is aware of the observer is expressed by her manner. The meeting is introduced by using abstract images which change faster and faster and gradually turn into recognizable images of streetcars sliding past each other preceded by meaningless rows of numbers, which then seem to identify the streetcars. The sound track supports and strengthens the transition from abstraction to reality; electronic sounds shift smoothly into sounds of trams jolting against each other. The woman is suddenly visible. Then abstractions again. Then the woman again. Then the camera zooms in until the image blurs, decomposes and changes into a new abstraction. Anonymous figures cross the screen. In a flash we see the woman continuing on her journey. The abstract images try once more to realize a reconstruction of the meeting. The rows of figures shown earlier reappear and suggest an index of what is history once more. In vain and with a symmetrical storyline the video ends; with fast shifting blue surfaces, just as it started and as it could be repeated endlessly.
Loek Stolwijk |
Jean-François Guiton, 1953, Paris (France)
Lives and works in Bremen (Germany)
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