Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster e Ange Leccia, Ile de Beauté
Like the Gold project, Île de Beauté (Beauty Island) was a collaborative venture between Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and the multimedia artist Ange Leccia, who worked together to select the images from the hundreds of hours of video filmed by Leccia between 1985 and 1996. The result is an abstract series of subjective views. Île de Beauté is packed with images of Lecci’s birthplace in Corsica, of the ferry sailing there and with images filmed in Japan. The eclectic soundtrack – mostly French pop music created with a synthesizer – is compelling as both foreground and background music. The images of Corsica (also known as ‘Île de Beauté’, or Beauty Island) are often taken from a moving car. The lines on the road surfaces, the winding mountain passes, the blinding headlights suddenly glaring at you, create an often hypnotic atmosphere.
The views of Japan – a bullet train , an open-air show – are juxtaposed with adaptations of films by Takeshi Kitano, Wong Kar-wai and with Michel Boisrond’s 1963 movie Cherchez l’Idole (starring Sylvie Vartan), a great success in Japan.