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Béton Armé

Richard Koeck

Slowness of images highlights the permanence of the infrastructure.


The most overwhelming objectivity can be an effective tool to bring to the attention a condition that, despite its long existence and permanence, keeps offering cues for research and speculation. In "Béton Armé", Richard Koeck puts the camera of his smart phone - a device almost any tourist and visitor has in his pocket - in front of an infrastructural joint at the Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris. And he brings to the attention of the observers some “non-places” dominated by form, functions, and materials.

Due to the slowness of the images, the passage of people almost disappears or is reduced to a steady flow of black and motionless figurines, as if they were carried out by a moving walkway. Even the passage of cars, slowed down, is a random and accessory event if compared to the presence and the permanence of the infrastructure. The machine age is still standing in our contemporary digital culture.

The video is conceived as a trilogy. In the succession of the three almost static shots, the focus remains on the infrastructure, circular half-tubes superimposed one on the other and suspended on concrete pillars. Massive appearance and suspension are the peculiar qualities of this in-between infrastructural space which, despite its backsite location, is actually essential for letting the contemporary metropolis work and is traversed on a daily basis by thousands people who have Paris as their point of destination or departure.

Credits

Location: Charles De Gaulle airport, Paris, France

France 2015
Duration: 6'40''