Michèle Waquant

Meanderings through a city and associations between sequences of animals enclosed in zoos and their depiction in furniture and objects. Notes on language customs, confinement, abnormal behaviour, nostalgia for savagery, a museum of natural history and male-female relations. Filmed in Super 8 and video, this tape was produced after the famous case of a Japanese cannibal that rocked the Parisian media.

A torrent of words, of tenderness, of violence, of sense, and nonsense. Exasperation in speech as it butts up against things and repeats in a million ways its submission to nature and life. Red night. Collapse of night as dreams topple to their own destruction. Ruin, as an inescapable as the impediments we place before ourselves, destiny which sweeps us away, and on which we have so little hold.

A tree on the banks of the Seine. The title, in Morse code.

Pauline has a daydream inspired by Manet's paintings. The point of view of painting, and the question of the movement. Close-ups of Pauline, quiet, laughing or serious. Her voice in Paris, her accent, the music she listens to. The sounds of her house, and of her life being led. At a distance.

The term "white noise" describes the technical application of a certain quality of background noise obtained by emitting constant energy to different sound frequencies. This effectively "cancels out" the frequencies and the equivalent of "silence" is produced. Les Bruits blancs centres on a dual polarity: the Parisian periphery - the perimiter boulevard of Paris - its urban landscape, and the flux of a water current - the St. Laurent seaway which circles Montreal.

This video suggests a dialogue between two buildings : on one side, the empty wall of 212, rue du Faubourg, and on the other, the view from a work room. A busy neighbour, a woman, accentuates the passage of time and the sound relates the presence/existence of a world outside the frame.

An urban sound landscape is transformed into techno music. The city moves from day to night. Drugstore crosses multiply and pulse according to their own rhythm. They are transformed into a sky of crosses.

A walk within a place which possesses its own rhythm, in the heart of the city: the garden. A dream amongst the trees, children, birds and strollers. Like mental images of the dreamer, fishermen watch over these scenes. A line links them to the mysterious world where fish evolve. This video was filmed in October 1984, at the Saint-Mandé Park, and contains images taken at the Trocadero Aquarium.

A fantasy using hand movements, involuntary gestures, attitudes and habits. With the absence of words, these movements become choreographies. A musical passage alerts them and guides them like a punctuation, or carries them towards unexpected fictions. At times calm, curious, anxious or very nervous, a parrot appears among the various monologues and dialogues which form and come undone...