SCREENING AT THE VICTOR HUGO LAB
Les ouvriers du tri, Maxence Rifflet
As part of Raout #3, an event of the Rrouen network at Labo Victor Hugo, 27 rue Victor Hugo, Rouen.
Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 October, 11am – 6pm
On the occasion of Raout#3, the Centre photographique Rouen Normandie invites you to extend the discovery of the work of French artist Maxence Rifflet (1978), presented elsewhere in the exhibition Le ciel par-dessus le toit dedicated to his latest project, conducted between April 2016 and November 2018, in seven prisons in collaboration with prisoners.
We have chosen here to present a video made in 2014 at the Argentat waste sorting center in Corrèze: Les Ouvriers du tri. A dozen agents take turns on a circular chain to sort, by hand, the recyclable waste that passes in front of them. Shot over a period of two years, just before the modernization of the factory, the movie was built from preparatory studies and dialogues with several agents. This long process aimed at finding a fair place for the camera to describe the reality of this often denigrated and mostly ignored work, on which the recycling of materials depends.
The film, a 16-minute loop without commentary, gives a close-up view of the bodies, gestures and rhythms of the daily work of the men and women who sort our “clean waste” on an incessantly congested crown. It also stems from a more general reflection on the representation of work and its relationship to the question of realism in painting as analyzed, for example, by the American art historian T.J. Clarke (An Image of the People. Gustave Courbet and the Revolution of 1848). Marcel Mauss’s text entitled “Les techniques du corps” is one of the elements that contributed to the development of this film.
This work, although it predates the set produced in prison presented at the Photographic Center, resonates in many respects; already addressing the study of bodies under constraint, and proceeding, as for his later work, from a nourished exchange with the people he met and a concern for finding the right form, as close as possible to the experience lived by the artist.
Les Ouvriers du tri was realized in collaboration with Antoine Yoseph within the framework of a two-year research of the Rado group on invitation of Peuple et culture Corrèze. Public order of the National Center of Plastic Arts.
The Center offers you a guided tour of the exhibition Le Ciel par-dessus le toit
15 rue de la Chaîne, with Maxence Rifflet this Saturday, October 19th at 4 pm.
Exceptional opening also in the framework of Raout #3
this Sunday, October 20th from 2pm to 6pm.
Photography : Maxence Rifflet, Extract from the video Les ouvriers du tri, 2014
Free admission