Reconstructing Mariënbad

Reconstructing Marienbad consists of 3 separate installations, inspired by the film classic ‘L’Année Dernière à Marienbad’ (1961) by Alain Resnais. The installations investigate how a cinematic experience can be tranformed into an architectural form.

‘Disembodied narrative’: all the spoken text of the opening sequence of ‘L’Année à Marienbad’ is deconstructed in horizontal and vertical elements, that are printed on a disk and look like binary code. The disks rotates under stroboscopic light, which melts the abstract elements back together into a readable text.

‘Cinematic Decoupage’: this installation is a maquette, which consists of dozens of perfect copies of the same empty hallway of the movie. The maquette transforms this single frame into a animated sculpture by rotation. Because of the persistence of vision this sculpture transforms into a living and organic image.

‘Regard-en-Abyme’: this installation combines all the interior rooms and spaces of the opening sequence of ‘L’Année à Marienbad’ together in an ovul shaped maquette. By using a pinhole camera the slowly rotating maquette is transformed into a cinematic experience and the spectator can wander endlessly through the empty corridors and hallways of the movie.

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