Auguste-Dormeuil
Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil
I was there, Power Blackout, Sao Paulo, 2013
Lambda print under Diasec mounted on aluminium
109 x 203 cm
Edition of 4 ex + 1 AP
© Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil - ADAGP & Courtesy Galerie In Situ - fabienne leclerc, Grand Paris
The term blackout refers to a large-scale electricity outage or, in wartime, the action of dimming lights in order to protect a location from enemy attack.
Such blackouts frequently plunged European cities into darkness during the Second World War. By extension, a blackout is also a momentary loss of memory due to the consumption of alcohol or drugs.
There can be no images without light. Cinema and photography are media in which images are fixed on film stock by exposure to light.
The Blackout project considers the contrary possibility of creating images, not out of light, but from the presence of darkness.
The artist's project consists in putting out the lights on the night-time skyline of world capitals, doing so from a locale offering a panoramic view. Each point of light was masked by a black dot stuck on the glass surface of the window, causing the city lights to gradually disappear. This work on erasing outside light was done at night.
Come the dawn, the window was transformed into a map of the night-time lights. The black dots that masked the skyline at night now showed the position of those nocturnal lights, like a negative image.
The Blackout series consists of photographs taken of these windows in the daytime.
Catalogue Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil : "Include me Out", MAC/VAL Museum Edition