Strange things we find in our great grandparents basements
More recently I have been working on a new project which combines my street films and performances with my great grandfathers collection of films and photos from as early as 1912, creating strange and anachronic encounters in modern urban settings. After 4 years of using home video to film my street performances I stumbled upon my great grandfather's collection of Pathé Baby films. Pathé Baby was the first home video camera created for public use in 1923. Little by little what at first seemed like strictly "my work" has become a generational and timeless street project, blending the first Pathe Baby home videos and photos with my street interventions with a hidden camera.
Pathé Baby- PaperGluenScotch
During the first part of the 20th century, Pathé became the largest film equipment and production company in the world. In 1923 Pathé released a 9.5mm camera, the Pathe Baby. It was effectively the first cine camera for home use.This video are some of the results of my trial and errors of merging my films with my great granfather’s films.
Vintage Street Art
My great grandmother, Antoinette Varanbon (1892-1979) was the first ever recorded French street artist performing in over 20 different cities in France between 1927 and 1945. She was accompanied by her husband, Raphael Aubert (1887-1977) who filmed and photographed her with his Pathé baby domestic camera.
My great grandfather, Raphael Aubert, bought his Pathé Baby in 1927. I discovered his collection of films in my grandmother's basement in the South of France 84 years later. Raphael Aubert, alongside his collection of films also had taken hundreds of photos and though he did not consider himself a photographer nor a film maker he was without doubt one of the first to enjoy the general accessibility of film making and photography. The majority of his photos and films documented the life and works of Antoinette Varanbon.
Rose Signol
Antoinette Varanbon's illegitimate Berber daughter, worked alongside her mother at an early age.
Reanimating the Dead
Reanimating the Dead is my first step towards reworking some of Raphael Aubert's films and photos and has actually overgrown the initial project. This first experimentation consisted in animating my great grandfather's fotos through stop motion and then projecting the images on city walls. More recently I began to animate other people's deceased family members, in particular people who lived during the same time as Raphael Aubert and Antoinette Varanbon. The following bits of film are simple tests and works in progress to develop ideas.
Animation and projection of a photo of my grandmother
Street projection in Marseille, France
P. MORRIS
P.MORRIS (1888-1943) was Raphael Aubert's cousin. He smoked 3 different packs of cigarette brands a day, Craven A's, Gauloises, and Three Castles. In March 1943 he was diagnosed with lung cancer, shortly after he was called to war on the German front. His life came to a fatal end while smoking his last cigarette in the middle of a violent battle that killed over 2000 french soldiers. It was his first cigarette of the day.
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