Bombyx mori

The light reflected by the silk in Bombyx mori replaces the extinguished light of the burned out neon light: the thread envelops the neon tube like a shroud and 'repairs' it at the same time by giving it back a little glow.

The production of the yarn by the silkworm–to form a cocoon, in its process of metamorphosis –becomes auto-mummifcation, the chrysalis being smothered with hot air to keep the thread intact. The butterfly, that will not come out, will never adjust artificial light. 

As the production of silk thread by the larva is a patient task to form a cocoon that will allow it to molt, we spend a part of our lock down in winding the thread on neon tubes, a long and thorough manual task, to envelop a defective object that a priori could not have a second life–between reparation and burial.

The neon tube, a modern light form that allows labor at any time of the day or night–obsolete already and soon replaced by the light of the even more harsh and cold light of the LED, causing photo-pollution that threatens many species with extinction–is here covered by a faint light from an age-old tradition already based on animal exploitation and a context of world trade, symbol of seduction and luxury from China to Ancient Rome.

Coming from the drool of the larva, the silk deals with desire, attraction and speech, with the great tales and transmission of knowledge that have spread along the Silk Roads. The world we built up is made of our shared narratives and by the long lasting glimmer that resist from the blinding light of power.

During this time on standby, we vacillate between emotions not knowing if we will suffocate under our masks, powerless, in restricted lives and completing the borders shut down in fear of others or if the cocoon that physically isolates us from each other prepares a collective rebirth, a metamorphosis.

While the first lock down had put our frenetic activities on hold and significantly slowed down the traffic and construction work allowing us to reconnect with the earth (hearing birds singing)–until its depth, seismometers giving a better monitoring of seismic moves with less interference noise–, inhabitants of the North part of our city of Strasbourg are suffering quakes due to geothermal drilling in a region placed on a seismic fault that makes the houses vibrate during the second quarantine that strongly shakes our social, technical and symbolic base.

Hold on

Video for a standby (idle) screen conceived in the suspended time of the lock down. An isolated covid 19’s virion bounces from one edge to the other of the screen as we go around in circle in a confined space that, for a while, constituted our whole universe. As permeable to emotions as we are to the virus, the image follows our reading of information, rumours and controversies about the pandemic.

*If you have any problem to access the video, you can also visit: http://www.cc-comma-mg.com/formes/hold_on.html

Score for three smartphones

Three smartphones – sign of presence of their owner and their germs that cover the phones, or metaphor of their long-distance relationship – are passing a covid 19’s virion from one to the other.

Allegory of the individual infectiousness or of the subject coronavirus at the center of the conversations, the installation depicts our permeability to virus as well as to emotions. The score has to be performed precisely, yet, in French, we use the term 'interpréter' as we would do from a personal and cultural perspective with information.

*If you have any problem to access the video, you can also visit: http://www.cc-comma-mg.com/formes/partition_3_smartphones.html

comma (Clémence Choquet, Mickaël Gamio)

We are a French artist duo that studied at the Hear of Strasbourg (France) and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna (Austria), we have participated in artist residency programs in Japan, France and Portugal. We have recently started an intercultural cycle of residencies and expositions between France, Japan, Brazil and Corea.

In context, our works refer to reality by confrontation, by contact–contiguity and continuity–and relation; they result from collisions and the apprehension of a place from its physical, geological, historical and cultural features, in the permeability from one field to another, from one culture to the other. We mainly produce site-responsive installations, recalling the silent stirring of the past or creating light interferences so raising the places’ ambiguities. We are equally interested in scientific concepts, technologies that derive from them and popular imagery; by monuments which make History and the sound of the present time which defies immediate understanding.

Our recent research focuses on the ground: the seism’s that shake our architectural and social constructions, the imaginary related to a place (geomythology, risk culture in folktales and pictures…), thresholds and in a metaphorical way the minimum, the base of our material and psychic structures.

It brings out different timescales to accommodate us: from the geological time to those–optimized and sustained–of the production pace, including compulsive clicking, the way we experience it (when waiting, or bored), and revivals of cultural forms.

Along with a site specific production (installations, sculptures), we produce videos and publish texts and photographs.

Artist Page: http://www.cc-comma-mg.com

Image, video and text courtesy of the artist.

Edited by Sue and Emily/CAFA ART INFO