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Work Type: ever-growing video gaining around 2mn every year. Transforming and adapting to the place where it is exhibited.
At the center of Kévin Bray’s art practice resides the video Morpher. Like a living organism, this video piece is continuously evolving, in addition to adapting to the spaces where it is displayed. It tells the story of a being in search of an identity, for itself as much as for the context of its own exploration.
Attempting to make a comment on the way we consume information and the limits of our understanding, Morpher questions what the borders of subjective and objective truth are and how these boundaries manifest themselves. Navigating through a reality that would be constructed only by humans for humans, the journey undertaken in this work becomes a shape shifting critical mirror of our language, information and data society. Drawing inspiration from philosophy, media literacy, narratology and symbolism, the different layers composing the video could have been overwhelming in its abundance, if it weren’t for Bray’s purposeful revealing of the compositions at play. Influencing the configuration of reality by montage and alienation, he recalls videos of ‘behind the scenes’ vfx breakdowns of Hollywood movies. Inviting us to be active agents within the developing processes at play; this specific exchange with the viewer is an appropriation of Bertolt Brecht’s ‘distancing effect’ in which familiar contents are presented in an unfamiliar way. This technique, used in both theatre and cinema, was conceived in order to provoke the audience to not be passive spectators lost within the narrative but rather, to be conscious critical observers.
Morpher is trying to make a comment on the way we consume information and the limits of understanding it. What are the borders of subjective and objective truth? and how do they manifest themselves? It is navigating through a reality that would be constructed only by humans and for humans, where the complexity of thoughts and processes are overwhelming and where being skeptical is the only way of raising truth. It tries to be a shape shifting critical mirror of our language, information and data society.
“In Morpher you will see that I am showing purposely the different layers composing the video. As much as this technic can remind you of the vfx breakdowns of some Hollywood movies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMwM_EU6kcg&ab_channel=VivekChaurasia
It is also an appropriation of the distancing effect created by Berthold Brecht as a reaction against the role that fiction played in the construction of propaganda used during the second world war, by the Nazis as much as by the North Americans. "The distancing effect is a technique used in theater and cinema that prevents the audience from losing itself completely in the narrative, instead making it a conscious critical observer."
Brecht said: "Theatrical illusion must be partial so that it can always be recognized as illusion."
"The question of what artistic devices we should choose is simply the question of how we can get our audience to be socially active. How we can knock them into shape. We should try out each and every conceivable artistic device which can help towards this aim whether it is old or new."
Quickly I noticed that the simple act of breaking and revealing the backstage of a fiction was recreating one almost instantly and the complexity involved in the making of an (animated) image creates new challenges as much as new possible forms of poetry.”