Quarks series, 2002.
5 photomontages, Rag bright white inkjet pigment print on 310g mat paper, h20 x 30 cm.
Edition of 5 + 3 artist copies.
Series published as a slideshow in The Republic of Images (story including a text and 2 other photomontages, Big Bang and Mezopolis), in online Tales Magazine #5, Paris, 2010.
“Republic of Images”, theory-fiction, Tales Magazine #5, 2010.
In the PIIMS’ Universe of Images, things have been spiraling out of control for quite a while now! The Crisis Cell has been trying to straighten things out but that was only a superficial solution to a profound problem.
After years of intense hijinks and chaotic mobilization, the situation then strangely froze, like a cold war, tense; we really needed a new order, to go backward to be able to move forward, to try to save the situation, to hope…
If memory serves, the CDC Crisis Cell was formed in a tumultuous, meteoric moment (which we came to call “Big Bang”), in which the image population began to express itself much more violently than usual, and we had sensed “the idea that maybe all we needed that night was a trifle, a tiny next-to-nothing to change the situation,” at the risk of general demise. We never figured out what happened that night, “between cranial tsunami or exceptional astral conjunction.” “But the fact remains that there was trouble in the neurotransmitters,” like a disgusting oil slick, that we brushed up against the Big Night. It was apparently that day that the image unions had institutionalized the CDC, to better control the catastrophe and, despite their lack of clear vision, they still managed to save the day.
Following that yet little understood episode, conflicts were, however, persistent and the situation remained unhealthy, awkward — too hot, too cold, too high-pressure, too low-pressure, too windy, not windy enough, too littered, too dry, too humid, too many chemicals, too synthetic, too fake, too many lies. And, in the end, too much exhaustion, ageing, boredom, jealousy, dull anguish, fear, sadness. Even if the images sometimes awakened and began to play music, to shake a leg and dance, the general ambiance was fairly desolate, worn out by so many empty projections, misunderstood plans, missed opportunities, as if the ghost of the catastrophe still prowled in the PIIMS sky. There were a few vague stabs at self-organization, which never came to fruition. The unions, even if they didn’t perfectly represent PIIMS in its global nature, became a operation base and we had hoped that the CDC, where the five principal bodies consulted one another, would bring forth a governance worthy of its name. But plagued by internal wars, the inability to let go, and very tentative stopgap improvisations, they never managed to accomplish that transformation… It was a situation, an unobtrusive occurrence but one that, like a simple breath of air, opened up a new horizon, perhaps a promise … The Mirror, the PIIMS Universe newspaper, found and published, under the ambiguous title “Conspiracy,” the undated, slightly weird testimony of a former silent CDC Scribe, which could easily leave you highly perplexed. We had a hard time reading it but it spoke of things like the “Republic of Images “ the “Parliament of Images,” the “Crisis Cell,” the “Times” party, which we understood could take on different colors. We also deciphered terms like “Mezopolis” or “Polygon” and many other concepts that, in their vagueness, invited speculation… That article, while stuck between countless banalities in a slightly exhausted world, produced a sort of unexpected electric shock within the image company. Between fantasy and anxiety, the images began to quiver once more…
Not knowing if it was real testimony or pure fiction, were we to believe that there may have been a time when the PIIMS universe was governed by the Republic of Images, where the various currents of a single party called Times had been seated? In any case, that aroused the desire to reinvent it…
