CURTAINS | Video Mapping Festival 2024

I noticed the modern façade of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-la-Treille on a walk through Lille a few years ago. Since then, I have had the desire to realise a work on this architecture. What makes it special is not only the aesthetics of its external form, but also the fact that it is constructed in such a way that it lets daylight into the interior of the building. I took up this peculiarity in my concept and translated it into the idea of asserting the translucent surface.

The architecture of the cathedral becomes a membrane behind which an unreachable world is concealed. It is not materially tangible for the religious community, but remains in a virtual sphere of the imagination. In this way, an analogy unfolds between the spiritual spaces of faith and the equally virtual spaces of the digital worlds. Both places of longing are full of signs in which people search for knowledge, certainty and hope.

The work performs like a pop song, opening up a space for interpretation through its allusions and gestures. Not least thanks to the grandiose sound design by Thomas Werner, whose sound art makes the peculiar grid of the façade vibrate. Only to finally break with convention and stretch out time to end in decelerated silence. Without the sound, the audience remains abandoned, thrown back on itself.