Emergence, 2018

Uprizings, exhibition presented at Galerie de l’UQAM and Cinémathèque québécoise, organized and circulated by Jeu de Paume, Paris

Curator: Georges Didi-Huberman

Emergence, 2015

Le Mois de la photo à Montréal 2015 – Presented at Parisian Laundry, Montréal

Disturbed by the traumas that knotted together the history of the second half of the 20th century, Blain has constructed her recent projects out of archival film found on the Internet – footage that makes visible social and political tensions, such as those that have gripped South Africa, Chile, Iran, Palestine, China, Paris, and Prague. Although the audio-visual texture of these pieces is imbued with the past, the artist is committed to wringing from their content all that can be extrapolated to the present.

Emergence (2015) is a video installation ; the title is drawn from a quote by Michel de Montaigne: “Emergence is a matter of bringing to consciousness.” What emerges to consciousness is not the illusion of trompe-l’oeil but, as Louise Déry has suggested, a trompe-temps: a double temporal plane represented by two parallel screens. The eclipsed action of the background is glimpsed through fractured fervently agitated crowds. The slow-motion treatment simultaneously expands time, dislocating our perceptions. “Memory is built on injury, on the disjointed, on the heterogeneous,” Derrida exclaims, in Tourner les mots. Emergence reminds us that a placid memory is doomed to fall asleep.

– Joan Fontcuberta, La condition post-photographique, Le Mois de la Photo 2015, Montréal