Tête à tête avec Claire Savoie
Photo: courtesy of Claire Savoie & Steve Giasson, with the collaboration of Doriane Biot
A siren. A streetcar passes by in a grey city. A few boxes. A voice off-screen rises in a misty landscape: Can one narrate time— time as such, in and of itself? Most certainly not, what a foolish undertaking that would be.1 1 - Jean-Luc Godard, JLG/JLG et autres textes (Paris: P. O. L, 2022), 149. Claire Savoie has quoted Jean-Luc Godard a few times in her works, without always specifying it. This excerpt comes from the film Germany Year 90 Nine Zero (1991). This excerpt doesn’t come from one of Claire Savoie’s “date videos.” Yet her works demonstrate an acute awareness of the present moment, constantly occupied with this “foolish undertaking” of “narrating time.” Esse invited me to delve into her conceptual work and continue the amicable dialogue we commenced 20 years ago, when I was just beginning my bachelor degree in visual and media arts and Claire, I believe, was starting to teach her first course.
Steve Giasson: Dear Claire, 17 years ago, you began a vast and wonderful project called Aujourd’hui (dates-vidéos). On the Vimeo page dedicated to the project, you define it in the following way: “This project, which has been on-going since 2006, consists in trying to make one video per day (the title refers to the work of conceptual artist On Kawara: Date Paintings). The presentation of this body of work varies depending on the dissemination contexts, whether in the gallery or in the theatre. My working method involves using only what each day (the date inscribed in the video) offers me in terms of visual, sonic, and textual material.”2 2 - “Aujourd’hui (dates-vidéos) – 2006,” Vimeo, https://vimeo.com/showcase/1748945 (our translation).
