Safeguard emergency light system
2010
Colour video
7min. 31sec. Framed score: 60 x 34 cm (23 5/8 x 13 3/8 in.)
During a trip to Thailand in 2010, Bertille Bak met residents of the Din Daeng district of Bangkok who were threatened with eviction without any hope of being rehoused. In this video work, the French artist has immortalized their anger, which they cannot express but silently. It shows a strange, nocturnal performance where all these left behind perform at their window a revolutionary hymn that is encrypted in luminous signs, to which the fatal response is the vision of the collapsing building.
In Safeguard Emergency Light System as in her other works, the artist investigates community and identity issues by interrogating the memory of people and places, whether in northern France's mining communities, in Bangkok, Vietnam, or in Gypsy communities. With subtlety and humor, she conveys, often through video, her favorite medium, the complexity of certain social reality.
Held in the Pinault Collection, Safeguard Emergency Light System was presented in the group show À Triple tour. Collection Pinault (“triple locked”) at the Paris Conciergerie, in 2013.
In Safeguard Emergency Light System as in her other works, the artist investigates community and identity issues by interrogating the memory of people and places, whether in northern France's mining communities, in Bangkok, Vietnam, or in Gypsy communities. With subtlety and humor, she conveys, often through video, her favorite medium, the complexity of certain social reality.
Held in the Pinault Collection, Safeguard Emergency Light System was presented in the group show À Triple tour. Collection Pinault (“triple locked”) at the Paris Conciergerie, in 2013.
Exhibitions
© Bertille Bak
Courtesy Galerie Xippas, Paris
© Bertille Bak
Courtesy Galerie Xippas, Paris
© Bertille Bak
Courtesy Galerie Xippas, Paris
© Bertille Bak
Courtesy Galerie Xippas, Paris
