Video mapping made during a creation residency organised by Rencontres Audiovisuelles / Video Mapping European Center as part of the Video Mapping Festival #8.
► The remains of yesterday
Inspired by the recent history of the city of Béthune and the Hauts-de-France region, this mapping transposes the region’s mining past into a device where words, rather than coal, are the material to be extracted.
Playing with new media codes – social network interface, generative AI, alt text – the work stages an excavation in the sediments of contemporary images taken from a photo library: selfies, screenshots, still lifes, vernacular photographs… Gradually, these images give way to their textual descriptions, which are gradually refocused on the landscapes of Hauts-de-France.
They converge on the image of a “black mountain”, a reference to the mine dump, yesterday’s waste that has become a characteristic feature of the contemporary landscape of the coalfields. The mine dump here does not refer to a precise location, but is generated by AI, creating an imaginary, digital representation of these artificial hills.
Like a mining operation, a sentence rises to the surface: Beyond invisible walls, images defend memory from fading. The words themselves are extracted, fragmented and then reassembled in the form of a shifting deposit. Ultimately, this is what this mapping is about: reactualising the memory of a place through images.
Direction and animation: Martina Stella
Original music: Gabriele Stera
An event offered as part of the Video Mapping Festival organised by Rencontres Audiovisuelles.
With the support of the Hauts-de-France Region, DRAC Hauts-de-France, the Communauté d’Agglomération de Béthune-Bruay Artois Lys Romane and the City of Béthune.
In collaboration with Labanque and the Béthune-Bruay Tourist Office.
Work made during a creation residency organised by Rencontres Audiovisuelles as part of the Video Mapping European Center.
With the support of the European Union (Europe is committed to the Hauts-de-France Region through the European Regional Development Fund)
