The Algiers' Sections of A Happy Moment

On a roof in Algiers, a group of young men of different ages are playing football. They interrupt their game to watch one boy feed a group of seagulls.

The Algiers’ Sections of a Happy Moment is a thirty-seven minute video consisting of 600 black and white photographs. David Claerbout uses multiple cameras to film the scene from different angles, collating over 50,000 photos taken in a few seconds. He then arranges these photos in a particular order to create a video projection that interferes with our linear perception of time, leading the viewer to believe that a narrative thread is woven into the film. The result gives the impression of a happy moment suspended in time. But reflecting on the method and observation of the production, the viewer realises that the story is fake, carefully assembled by Claerbout.

This work in the Pinault Collection was first presented in 2011 at the Palazzo Grassi as part of the "Le Monde vous appartient" (“The World Belongs to You”) exhibition.