KILL ME TWICE, DEAR FRIEND, DEAR ENEMY

by Emmanuelle Antille (2005)

2 channel video installation , colour, sound, 14 min



Emmanuelle Antille's oeuvre explores the interaction between different groups of people in their isolated living spaces and specific, often somewhat alienating, rituals. She often develops a theme in the longer term, working with a group of (amateur) actors. She then creates a number of works, in various media, from this material. A feature of her video works is the interweaving of reality, fiction and dreams. These works confront the viewer with a universe which oscillates between closeness and distance, affection and latent aggression, going as far as physical or spiritual intrusion. While achieving this effect, Antille also creates highly original female roles which mark a departure from tradition, since they are not circumscribed by the male viewpoint.

"Tornadoes of My Heart" is the generic title of a body of works which includes three video installations, a series of thirty photographs and a feature film. The first installation of "Tornadoes of My Heart" is "Kill me twice, dear friend, dear enemy".

From the artist's website:
"This installation is composed by two large video projections placed side by side on the same wall. This double projection presents two boys of seventeen years old, two friends gone for a walk in the middle of nowhere. They are like two blood brothers, and we enter in their violent intimacy, the particularity of their relationship. The videos draw their portraits, showing the power of their bounds and secret expectations. Edited according a elaborate system of loops and axed around the main sequence of images showing a tornado, this installation places the viewer directly in the heart of this « love/hate » relationship, deep inside this exclusive friendship at the specific moment where the two teenagers’ lives is about change forever, where through death the two of them will become one and unique body."

About "Tornadoes of My Heart":
"In this whole project I developed the theme of teenagehood through his various aspects : the rituals and languages, the friendships, family and the relationships inside a community, the diary. This whole project started by the writing of the screenplay for the feature film titled Rollow. Once the screenplay written I organized several castings in order to find the teenagers who would act in the film. My wish was to work with unprofessionnal actors, some very dynamic energies.
As soon as the technical team was complete and the teenagers selected, we rehearsed all together everyday during a period of two months before the shooting of the film. During this period I met each teenager’s family, spent time in each one’s environment in order to know them better. All these preparation phases, close to the way of making a documentary film, brought a lot to the project and created a very strong intimacy that could be felt afterwards in the final images. After the rehearsal period, we shot the project during two months in summer. In the end, we had more than fifty hours of film material : some filmed sequences were made for Rollow, others for the video installations. Shot in a very intimistic way by a small team, the images are often very physical and close to the bodies. The project is based on this idea to film scenes of fiction as in a documentary film. The camera was always on and shooting almost all the time. We were all moved by the immergency of catching all the kids’ spontaneous gestures and gazes, all those very fragile and thiny attitudes that happen only once and that can never be repeated. This was a way to blow the limit between the reality and the fiction.
About the photographic series, it started right after the filming of the project. At the end of the summer I organized a photo shooting with each teenager without the technical team. In a calmer atmosphere we went back to each location of the filming. I wanted to take very intimate and intense portrait of each of them, to catch who they really were without them having to play a part. So I asked them to look straight to the camera in a very simple way. We shot about one thousand photos in total. In the end I made a selection of thirty of them."


To see an installation video of the work, simply follow the link below. Enjoy.


http://www.emmanuelleantille.com/category/tornadoes-of-my-heart/video-installation/