video, stacks of blank sheets, 2023
This piece consists of a video projected onto two stacks of blank A4 sheets laid out on the floor. On screen, one see a pile of official reports topped with a CD-ROM. A person, visible only through their hands, removes the disc, and begins to leaf methodically through the reports, transferring each page from one stack to the other. The hands appear expert: they read, select, and redact with a black marker. The video’s blur, combined with the redacted text, adds a second layer of illegibility.
At the end of the sequence, the hands return the CD-ROM and slide it discreetly beneath the remaining pile of blank pages. By exhibiting the reports, the video stages the illusion of a possible “truthful judgment.” But do these documents bear any truth at all? The final gesture completes the sleight of hand — the ultimate demonstration of the power of the false. Whether truth or fabrication, the act of hiding the wafer-thin CD-ROM beneath the stack of paper becomes a passage into a zone where reality and fiction blur into indiscernibility.
Produced and presented as part of the exhibition Non-Lieu, curation : in.plano, Au Lieu, Editions Extensibles, Paris, France.
Carolle Sanchez 