August

August by Claude Ciccolella

15'41 stereo 2018

About
First spotting of the tower la Marseillaise of Jean Nouvel on August 7, 2018. In discovering it closely I was enthused by its allure, its patterns, its colors, it made me think of a monumental symbolic sculpture, a totem. A few months ago I had just finished December that I had completely realized the editing, from post-production to sound creation. I wanted to renew the experience, this form of experimental film diary: from every day of the week a different approach. As with Décembre I was facing a unique object, but unlike the island, filmed frontally and the same location, I could go around la Marseillaise. And a few months ago I had read an article on antimatter in a scientific journal. Antiparticles appeared in quantum theory as "mirror" material according to the transformations of space, charge or time. The particles and antiparticles were symmetrical, identically symmetrical, and in contact annihilated each other to turn into pure energy, the photons; only known situation in which the whole mass was transformed into energy. The dream could begin to unfold. La Marseillaise became object of desire and I was going to fly in a light show. But how to make the image of this antimatter? During the Big Bang there would have been as many particles as antiparticles, but where was this matter of the beginning of the Universe? Some scientific theories referred to the fact that there would be antigalaxies and they would be invisible. The antimatter having practically disappeared from our universe, its manufacture could only be done in the laboratory. My laboratory would be my eyes, the antitour would be propeled directly from my imagination to meet the tower. Four afternoons of filming of the week were necessary, the mistral preventing me from filming the other days. The tower la Marseillaise was not completely finished, its inauguration took place on October 25, 2018. One of the workers attracted by my merry-go-round came to see me and asked me what I was doing. I offered him to look in the camcorder eyepiece. Questioned by what he saw, a fragment of a tower, and perceiving his incomprehension, I explained to him that everything would be done at the editing. The post-production was complex and took me much more time than for Décembre. The rushes gave the directions and the lines of force, but all the work was done in the editing in an exploration of movements and research of rhythm ... The antimatter and the invisible universes took birth, crossed and re-crossed each other with the antitour identically symetrical, which in contact with the images of the tower has released new forms of energy, some creative energies. Fragments of motifs were linked together and the imaginary existent palpitated to the rhythm of a fractal and temporal construction. La Marseillaise was the vector of this meeting and their transformation. I had set myself only one constraint: the duration of each frame had to correspond to one of the numbers of the Fibonacci sequence converted into twenty five frames per second, followed as a spiral of acceleration and precipitation until at its zero, ultimate moment of the disappearance of the fragments and their mirror form, in an annihilation and transformation of energy, energy to go back in time and to make us disappear in an original fall.

The cinematographic journal in four days
"... an absence that becomes an additional territory for the imagination ... La Marseillaise, hymn to light: a walk, a staircase, an ascent to footbridges to or in the sky ..." Jean Nouvel