After an initial meeting in July 2010, John Christ ophe Norman and myself have decided to specify our exchange in writing. The artist explained to me and what is its practice, its genesis to its development, and I respond, questions, day after day. Until ...?
Lapalu Sophie: But I think the distance is also in the manner that you produce. Is the distance that you are browsing, since it is such a remote area we cross to get from one place to another. But there's also the fact that we put, we, spectators, remote : one is summoned to attend your steps, and images that allow for transmission are enigmatic, in shades of gray, and evoke precisely those of the pioneers of the mountain. With these images, you build up another distance, and leaves us in limbo: Where is it? When this picture was taken?
you how to understand these images and their production?
Cover - Walter De Maria mile long, dessin1968, 26.5 x 38 cm, graphite on paper, Jean-Christophe Norman 2010 Jean-Christophe Norman: Exactly, I wonder often if they are not too illustrative images that keep us at bay. They give the impression to know everything, to be informed, documented, but they give us space for reflection on one side and dream of another? I do not deny the images, quite the contrary. And I do not seek to put the spectators away. What I want to take the greatest possible distance is the spectacle and the spectacular. I feel that giving provides a clearer view of things, partly because it is "completed" by the viewer. For example, in a recent series entitled Cover , I covered photographs of iconic works and performances of contemporary art. All these works were created in 1968. These photographs were reproduced in a newspaper that I found during a visit to the villa Magnin exposure during a trip to Italy. A little over a year after the discovery of this newspaper, I decided to cover using graphite each of these images. This was a meticulous asked me many times. I wanted to get a certain result. Ensure that images appear or disappear depending on where the viewer is placed. Klaus Speidel wrote a fine article on this. He says for example that there is "reintroducing the imaginary part of documentary photography tends to be blocked because it tries to give everything to see. The engament that Covers ask visitors is similar to that of anamorphosis, where imaged a cache and another where the movements of visitors become productive. "I could talk to Thomas Bernhard and my experience as a reader. In these books Bernhard never describes the landscape and yet it appears very strongly in our minds. We conducted a building and we have accomplished
distance that separates us from him.
Right now I'm starting a project that has as its starting point, a book by Walter Bonatti (Italian guide who marked the history of mountaineering), entitled The great days. Again, I shall make a gesture of covering each of the thirty-three photographs that illustrate Bonatti's exploits. In a second time, I am going to foot the different faces he has climbed. I take photographs at the foot of each of these major alpine faces. Here, distance approximation, the threshold is trying to reach.
Cover - Walter Bonatti North Face of Matterhorn 25.2 x 18.4 cm graphite on paper, Jean-Christophe Norman 2010
SL: You conjugate economy means at the expense of self. Is there not something of the withdrawal of the artist here? (You're spending (while?), You appear not in the pictures (or very little), you refuse to create objects "well done" or by-products ...)
JC. N. : More than a withdrawal, I see a desire for autonomy. I realize my pictures alone, I'm almost always behind the lens. So I appear very rarely. And when I speak of spending, it is above all a desire to create a unity in action, achieve something. The exhaustion I do not think it's just a consequence but by no means a goal. That would have to do with a sense of suffering that I feel completely alien. As the idea of "well done" or "over-produced" I do not know. I do not think so. This can be sophisticated or crude images, videos can be mounted or not. Again, there is no rule. With the Constellation project walks (CAC Vilnius), throughout the year 2008, I redesigned by walking the edges of Vilnius within a constellation of cities (New York, Metz , Besancon, Berlin, Tokyo, Nice, Paris). Each time, only some of the contours of the Lithuanian capital was drawn in another city. It is a combination of all these courses that were run throughout. On this occasion I made a series of recordings with the video camera facing the ground. The result is a video about thirty minutes when the assembly is very present. A path is drawn abroad and creeping into urban areas. But then not need visas, the way is clear.
JC. N. : More than a withdrawal, I see a desire for autonomy. I realize my pictures alone, I'm almost always behind the lens. So I appear very rarely. And when I speak of spending, it is above all a desire to create a unity in action, achieve something. The exhaustion I do not think it's just a consequence but by no means a goal. That would have to do with a sense of suffering that I feel completely alien. As the idea of "well done" or "over-produced" I do not know. I do not think so. This can be sophisticated or crude images, videos can be mounted or not. Again, there is no rule. With the Constellation project walks (CAC Vilnius), throughout the year 2008, I redesigned by walking the edges of Vilnius within a constellation of cities (New York, Metz , Besancon, Berlin, Tokyo, Nice, Paris). Each time, only some of the contours of the Lithuanian capital was drawn in another city. It is a combination of all these courses that were run throughout. On this occasion I made a series of recordings with the video camera facing the ground. The result is a video about thirty minutes when the assembly is very present. A path is drawn abroad and creeping into urban areas. But then not need visas, the way is clear.
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