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Les Limites du Pouvoir
Sascha Gianella The on-going concern of Aurélien Bergot as portrayed in his work, is that of the notion of power. The artist has to date dedicated his photographic practice to the investigation of the visual representation of power in modern society – its history, its symbols, its forms and its limits. He uses these elements to construct his images, like a sculptor uses bronze. He takes into perspective Western art theory and its own codes of formal representation. It is hard to regard the work of Aurélien Bergot without identifying a major influence on his work, French philosopher Michel Foucault and in particular, the underlying principles in Madness and Civilization, The Birth of the Clinic, Discipline and Punish. Bergot’s works reiterate Foucault’s sense that power somehow inheres in institutions themselves rather than in the individuals that make those institutions function, particularly successfully executed in his early series Coalition (2008) and his current series Les Limites du Pouvoir. Coalition (2008), is documented from a frontal aesthetic, creating descriptive yet formal compositions of the external architecture and enclosures of selected international permanent missions in Geneva. This characterises the way in which the mere physical facade of these institutions exercise power – with a view to cohabitation or exclusion. The enclosures represent inpenetrable frontiers between the missions and the rest of the world, giving a distinct indication of their imposition to other countries, and their isolation at the same time; whilst positioning themselves within close proximity to two sociopolitical giants, the International Security Council and the United Nations. In the series Les Limites du Pouvoir Bergot explores power and its representation in the creation of modern society, with its principles of order and control, which again pointing to Foucault, tends to ‘disindividualise’ power, making it seem as if power inheres in the prison, in arms, in nature’s resources, the bank and the asylum. The artist has chosen as his medium these symbols of modern value and distinction, which constitute current political, economic and social power. As Coalition (2008) and Les Limites du Pouvoir work with architecture to symbolise power, Bergot’s recent series Cerbers (2009) uses as its medium, the image of Cerberus. In Greek mythology, Cerberus is the three headed dog who guards the entrance to the underworld. The dog’s role was to prevent the living from entering the land of the Dead. In most depictions of Cerberus, the dog is portrayed as a fierce individual who was so savage that even the Gods were afraid of him. In this series, Bergot, chooses to work with the uniform as a symbol of power, of force and of repression. He considers the uniform a visual barrage – both psychological and physical. It represents a united front of strength and power, yet denies any individuality to those who wear it. It protects the State rather than the interests of the individual. The subjects photographed in this series are not necessarily actual military soldiers. Some of them have made their choice, consciously, to refuse to serve in the army without denouncing their patriotism. Even so, the simple fact of the subject wearing the official Swiss uniform serves to renounce their individual personalities and ultimately their palpable power. The artist considers that the Swiss military soldier is perhaps so banale in his function that his image has become only that of a symbol. Ultimately, any individual, taken at random, could serve to represent Switzerland’s military power, it does not matter who wears the uniform. In Explosions (2009), the artist has tried to show the precise moment of an explosion; invisible to the naked eye, and yet extremely perceptible physically. Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of surfaces, lights and gases, in an arrangement whose internal mechanisms produce the relation in which individual elements are associated. Bergot detonated minor explosions in his studio, photographing the moment of detonation against a black backdrop. Using a slow shutter speed, the camera perceives and records the entire development of the explosion to produce a clear and precise image. The resulting image is that of a vivid and violent event which symbolises the cruelty of war and yet, also shows the formal beauty and abstraction of a detonation which creates a spontaneous and fascinating work of art. The series Rockets (2008) is linked in a certain manner to the Explosions (2009) series. The images are of fragments of Swiss military rockets that the artist has recupurated from a training ground and photographed in his studio with the respect of an archeologial object. These fragments are the result of an explosion, the trace of military action, of combat. The distance, lighting and the staging of the works give these objects of destruction the softness and beauty of a museum piece. In this series, Bergot toys with concept that the explosion itself functions similarly as an abstraction of the idea of power from any individual. It is not identified with an institution nor with an apparatus, it is a type of power, a modality for its exercise, comprising a whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets ; it is a physics or an ‘anatomy’ of power, a technology. Without being exhaustive or critical, Bergot’s interrogation of the notion of power attempts to establish a sort of index of symbols, architecture and modalities of power. His photographs are rather symbolic and formal works of the external representation of power. January, 2010 1. Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization, The Birth of the Clinic, Discipline and Punish. |
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