le matin

Morning. He begins in the glaring white square. Colored lines flicker across the white field. As they cross the picture, these lines shift in a vertical direction, sometimes quickly and sometimes rather slowly. Jerks and convulsions. Seething on the horizon. They collide and skitter apart. The flickering leaves after-images, mirages - are there two or three horizontal lines, or only one? Or have the eyes begun jiggling from staring at the light?

le matin, Paul Divjak´s video to the song of the same name by Bernhard Fleischmann, plays with perception and light. Warm light. Shades of yellow and orange glow like strips of fire, and then break up into fat points. Fade into black. Similarly to the music (which is dynamized by the images; without the soundtrack, they seem softer and more peaceful), they produce an atmosphere which suggests a (possible) name for the song, that of morning. The music pushes onward while the picture slips and wobbles. Carrying on before it even arrives. In fact, le matin is hand-made. A manual search through the TV channels to the music. Filmed with a video camera, digitally edited and then slightly altered altered. At times, fragile and short-lived patterns can form in this way: a face, a window, a figure leaving a room. But though they never coalesce, never develop a final form, they have a presence. Like images from a dream one cannot forget after waking up the next morning.

(Isabella Reicher)