Artist Wall | Maya Israel
hosts Jacques Fhima
Maya Israel: Your works deal with
verbal and visual codes
The abandoned books, the old
camera, the quotes, humor, food, writing, stamps, postcards, the protagonist, the
movie, the locations, landscapes, people, memory, music, archive. Where does it
all start Jacques? I am interested to hear about home, about Jacques the
curious boy, about the evolution of your visual language.
Jacques Fhima: Ever since I can
remember, I have been working with space and material. My work is very close or
identical to the work of the archeologist. I look at my place and try to
understand the components, and then the composition. I look for the material
and through it understand the history of the space. Early on, I edited a fanzine
of sorts, a single-copy magazine made of collage and text. My room was turned
into a library of what could be found on the street, for a creative kid, the trash
of Paris was rich in treasures. I did not shy away from carrying tons of
magazines from the Opera to La Bastille, my bag was always full.
MI: Memory, Residue.
Used materials, ancient cinematic
techniques, make me think of time travel, your travel through time. As someone
who sees beyond the mountain.
You communicate from your own
place, mostly emerge from your works as a multidisciplinary maker, as a self-taught
artist, who spread around himself any finding from the environment that went
out of conceptual and emotional use, studied the materials, set them ablaze with
words and images and transmits them, who is the addressee?
JF: The significant influence, in
terms of conceptual art and philosophy, is drawn from Dada and the philosophy
of the French revolution of 1968, and most of all Guy Debord. I started by
writing texts and manifests, poetry, performance and experimental cinema in the
early 1970s. Already then I was on a search for the possibility to capture
space and time with a pocket camera, a pencil and a typewriter. I was too young
to take part in the events, but I managed to get into places like the Modern
Art Museum of Trocadero, Grand Palais, the Muséum national d'histoire
naturelle du Jardin des Plantes, The Musée national
des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie de la Porte Dorée, the curiosity
in the anthropology and topography of the city, the library and the bookshop
were at the center of my attitude towards forms of new art. I was completely
self-taught and my culture as a mosaic. I was a novice, there was no one to ask
about the way, I have created my path and my public is universal.
MI: Transformation, from a mouse,
to an enlightened prophet.
You inhabit your works, you do
not only address things.
You are the actor in the movies,
you are the cinematographer, you are the director. What about the limits of the
piece. What are the limits of cinema or any other artwork you create?
JF: The point of departure is quantifiable.
I have found that so far at the "midlife" point the entirety of my
writing add up to 300,00km of words and creation. 300,000 km per second is the
speed of light. In order to understand the definition of the speed of light the
common example is of a man who lights a candle on Earth and the light takes a
second to travel to the moon.
We are talking about different
levels of the term "journey" whether it’s the light's whether the
train that travels backwards, and of course also the possibility to create the
wall, or some sort of installation of the postcards that talk about a
fabricated journey. All the parts of the installation speak of time units.
Fragments that together become the narrative of "The Pantheon", while
during the journey there is the transformation of the character from a mouse to
an enlightened prophet.
MI: Artist's Wall
I have invited you to exhibit at
the Artists' Studios, I personally am very connected to your work, your interest
in the collective subconscious, the movement and the eyes.
What in the verbal and what in
the visual of the Artist's Wall on which you were invited to exhibit…
JF: The situation I have created for
the Artist's Wall is at the same time a unit of conduct in time. It is composed
of an action included in the shaping of the experience of the moment. Gestures
which are the product of desire and of themselves. Other forms of design and
gestures are created.
Anyone who takes part in the
adventure can find a field of positive action, there is an attention towards the
general atmosphere. Anyone can have what he likes, what is attractive, and what
is important. It is not the individual structure of the thought or an account
of the structure, it is the possible proposal in a constructed situation.
Installation,
screening the films animation Lardux, the screening
of the film "The Pantheon" and an artist talk.
