| Le Tourniquet, 2009 |
Video, animation, B&W, 4 min. 48, looped
Production : Résidence Hauts de Rouen, École Régionale Supérieure des Arts, Rouen
In Le Tourniquet, an animated film made during a residency in the Hauts de Rouen, the eponymous presence of the turnstile is central. Alternately a game on which children of all ages and origins gravitate and a sketchy clock face, it constitutes one of the places through which the reality of the neighborhood is transmuted into allegory. A few months after the screening of the film in businesses in the Hauts de Rouen, we are exhibiting here the 140 drawings that were used to create the turnstile sequence. There is also this sheet flying in the wind at the window of a building, reminiscent of a scene observed almost ritually by Jan from the window of the apartment residence. In the context of this cartoon, the commercial message - "the right to essentials" - of the local chain of low-cost supermarkets "Le Mutant" resonates, in these times of social misery, as a kind of ethical injunction. Moreover, the scrolling of the images is carried by the ritornello of the music. In the spirit and in the procedures of manufacture on tracing paper, we find a community with the other cartoons of Jan Kopp: Mohammedia, The missing project (2008), exhibited last spring in these same galleries and The house (2010). The poetic and allegorical content of these films emerges fully over time. Their visionary force is not apparent at first viewing.
Production : Résidence Hauts de Rouen, École Régionale Supérieure des Arts, Rouen
In Le Tourniquet, an animated film made during a residency in the Hauts de Rouen, the eponymous presence of the turnstile is central. Alternately a game on which children of all ages and origins gravitate and a sketchy clock face, it constitutes one of the places through which the reality of the neighborhood is transmuted into allegory. A few months after the screening of the film in businesses in the Hauts de Rouen, we are exhibiting here the 140 drawings that were used to create the turnstile sequence. There is also this sheet flying in the wind at the window of a building, reminiscent of a scene observed almost ritually by Jan from the window of the apartment residence. In the context of this cartoon, the commercial message - "the right to essentials" - of the local chain of low-cost supermarkets "Le Mutant" resonates, in these times of social misery, as a kind of ethical injunction. Moreover, the scrolling of the images is carried by the ritornello of the music. In the spirit and in the procedures of manufacture on tracing paper, we find a community with the other cartoons of Jan Kopp: Mohammedia, The missing project (2008), exhibited last spring in these same galleries and The house (2010). The poetic and allegorical content of these films emerges fully over time. Their visionary force is not apparent at first viewing.