Emilie Berteau
Vers nos caveaux glacés (Towards Our Frozen Vaults)
Stills from Vers nos caveaux glacés (Towards Our Frozen Vaults).Film Project
"Vers nos caveaux glacés” is the title of the short film shot during my residency at Coachhouse1.
What I wanted to show or make people feel through my film is....
A buried world.
A submerged world.
A vault.
A journey into the abyss.
A journey into the bowels of the earth.
I combined the images of the seabed represented by the stained-glass windows and the aquatic plants in Chinese shadows, and the organic texture of the brick which recalls the idea of the vault.
The film begins by examining the window’s geological layers followed by a descent into the depths of the earth, until arriving at a strange place.
The frozen vault is also a metaphor for solitude. When we lock ourselves away, we isolate. When the loneliness becomes too strong, we sink, we sink in....
We descend into the abyss, into the darkness of being.
We are building the walls of our own prison.
The CoachHouse1 studio is a place that conceals several ambiguities for me. Through its stained-glass windows, its high ceilings, the whiteness of its walls, its architecture evokes a chapel or a monastery cell. It faces north; and daylight enters with difficulty, filtered through colored and opaque glasses. The space is quite dark, and the eye is naturally drawn upwards towards a skylight. This configuration gives the impression of being under the surface of the water and of holding apnea. Finally, the element that raises the most questions is a window that opens onto a brick wall, seemingly straight from a surrealist painting.
During my stay, every time I happened to open the sashes of this window, I felt a tightness in my chest. The vision of that brick wall hurt terribly and revived buried wounds. It reflected back to me, like a mirror, the image of my own solitude. It reminded me how much I had suffered from isolation not long before...
To free myself from such great turmoil, I felt the need to produce a work that would serve as catharsis.
This window inspired me to make a film. Furthermore, eager to share my experience, I invited a few people, one by one, to visit the studio to talk about the place, its history, its architecture, and discuss their feelings regarding this bricked up window. Then, everyone was invited to leave a comment in a notebook that I left in the studio for consignment, and available for future visitors.
Notebook Project
Se tankou yon zwazo kap chache yon nich nan mitan lan lanati.
Nan yon enpas san fen.
Yo di bonè pa gen pri
Men mwen toujou kenbe ti souri mwen
Menm lè tout fenèt lakay mwen bouche dèyè Yon rido an mi.
Maten an mwen leve
Dousman, mwen ouvè fenèt kay la
Mwen pa wè mòn yo,
zwazo yo pa souri.
solèy la pa souri.
Tout pòt kay mwen vire lanvè.
===
Like a bird searching for a nest,
in the middle of nature, in a dead end,
It is said that happiness is priceless.
I still sketch smiles,
Even when every window in my home is veiled by a thick wall.
This morning, awake, I delicately opened the windows of my house.
The mountains disappear, the birds are silent,
The sun sulks.
The doors of my home are all reversed.
— Jean-Yves Hector, December 3, 2023
Artist Statement
After completing my undergraduate studies in History of Art, Museology, and Philosophy at the Ecole du Louvre and the Sorbonne in Paris, I also studied Cinema at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts in Beirut and earned a Masters in Documentary Film at Paris 7 - Denis Diderot University. My documentary and experimental films were selected and awarded in several festivals around the world.
My work focuses on issues of solitude and the ethnography of relationships. It is the ambiguous and contradictory feelings that I have towards my need for isolation, freedom and the absolute that led me to focus and wonder about people who have made the choice to live alone or in the margins. The creative process allows me to confront and surrender to my emotions, and to realize my own introspection. By summoning the intimate, I hope to touch the universal. Indeed, for me, a human being becomes what he/she is to be only by experiencing solitude.
