Renaud
Auguste-Dormeuil
I will keep a light burning - Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2014
I will keep a light burning - Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2014

Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil
I will keep a light burning - Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2014
Performance, 05.17.2014
© Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil - ADAGP & Courtesy Galerie In Situ - fabienne leclerc, Grand Paris

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     On 14 April 1611, Galileo was invited to Rome to present his first telescope for observing the stars, which magnified its object thirty times. Members of the city's academy of sciences were thus able to see stars invisible to the naked eye. For the first time in human histor, a man made it possible to see something invisible.


     I will keep a light burning is a performance during which 1,000 candles reproducing the pattern of stars that will be visible in a hundred years' time are lit, one by one, over the evening, gradually building up the map of the heavenly constellations. This projection into the future shows us a sky we will never have the chance to see.

 

     By mapping an as yet unmanifested aspect of the real, I will keep a light burning 'gives form to the invisible, to the lines of a future sky. It manages to bring together three dimensions of time : the past, by pursuing the tradition of mapping the sky; the present, in the form of an ephemeral installation; and the future, which is the subject of the installation. The mapping activity also brings to mind the pervavise paranoia of society today, with it imperious need to plan the future. And yet, the light of candles or stars has guided men for thousands of years, and during the performance it may be that our apprehensiveness regarding an uncertain future will be soothed : the future is still there to be invented' (Toscane Angelier, Émilie Delcambre, Joris Thomas, on I will keep a light burning, FIAC hors les murs, 2013).

 

Catalogue Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil : "Include me Out",  MAC/VAL Museum Edition