For her first installation, French filmmaker Alice Diop has assembled contributions from composers, artists, poets and writers, The Guardian reported. Geste de Consolation is set in the 60-metre-long central hall of the Palais d’Iena in Paris.
The project takes the director of Saint Omer into an exhibition setting, placing work from several creative disciplines within a shared physical space. Its form offers a different relationship with an audience from that of a film shown on a screen.
Cinema generally presents a sequence whose timing is determined by the film. An installation can allow visitors to encounter a space and its elements at their own pace. That difference changes how an audience may experience relationships between individual works.
The range of contributors described in the report is central to the project. Artists, writers, composers and poets work through different materials and forms, so bringing them together makes the act of selection and arrangement part of the overall presentation.
The setting also gives the installation a defined architectural scale. A long central hall provides a physical context through which visitors move, rather than simply a neutral backdrop for an individual object.
Diop’s move into installation extends her public work into another medium while retaining a connection to the organisation of voices and perspectives. The Guardian’s account identifies the project’s title, location and broad creative scope. Together, those details describe a filmmaker using an exhibition to assemble a wider field of artistic work for audiences in Paris.
