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Atelier 105, en résidence / March 27, 2017

AGAINST TAΥLOR - ALEXIA CHEVROLLIER

CONTRE TAYLOR (AGAINST TAYLOR) presents a certain vision of a manual savoir-faire: the making of charcoal. Traditional charcoal burners are becoming rare. There are only a few left in France. The disappearance of this profession means that the craft will eventually be forgotten.

The man who is filmed builds and unbuilds his work, following a productive logic. If one puts Taylor’s writings into practice, the craftsman is stripped of the meaning of his production. But here, one mastered gesture comes after the other without being explained. The viewer thus becomes alienated whereas the worker recovers all his power. His gestures and his experience are fascinating; hard to understand, they become almost absurd for the viewer. Meditative images blur the frontier between reality and fiction.

Alexia Chevrollier criticizes the industrial system and creates the conditions of possibility to think the status of the craftsman. His obvious loneliness reveals a link between the work, the body and the location. The craftsman’s gesture is related to that of an artist. His work becomes an oeuvre, a sculpture.