The Necessary Minute by “Magasine Des Baleines

3 interludes, performance, 2012

Revue Learder: Magali Desbazeille
Production: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.
Thanks: Olivier Cherki

Description

Whether it be in Net-art, installations or performance art, Magali Desbazeille’s work raises questions about language, particularly coded language, and interacts with media.
For “Le Son des mots”, the artist wrote three interludes that punctuate the artistic proposals. Her interventions combine video archives (on the connection between music and Morse code; interviews with researchers specialized in language) and an autobiographical fiction borrowed from a diary that she found, in which she is 40 years old in 2034.

Text extracts

November 13, 2012:
-My old man wants me to go with him to some dumb event in Paris. He doesn’t want me to wear my tennis shoes or my uggs.
-I got my first high-heeled shoes, they’re blue, too cool. I AM 15, after all.
…
November 20, 2012:
-I didn’t get it last night, like the PERFORMANCES, as my old man called them, didn’t mean anything. He criticizes the songs I listen to, says they’re STUPID and don’t mean anything or always go on about the SAME-SILLY-LOVE-STORIES; well, man, his thing… I just didn’t get it.
-For real, my father is just thrilled to come see all those linguistic theories turned into something… when I tell him it’s the kind of thing that turns him on…
He gets all bent out of shape about my language… Linguistic theories… that’s his thing… his passion, as he says. A passion is better than a turn-on? He just can’t understand that there’s not ONE higher level of language, but multiple levels of language. He always has to label things, and defend his position… his language, his “register”, the purity of his language… purity is mega-weird, if you ask me… purity, ha.