|
Exploration Of The
Sins
by Etienne Tombeux
Exploration
The Seven Deadly Sins
PRIDE
The only one of the 7 sins which is exclusively human, that of modernity, of the
spirit of provocation, of the attempt on God; the creation which is pride (isn’t
it?).
This one has six fingers to a single hand, as it has two sexual identities and
as all shoes must fit his foot. Posing in Majesty, its image is declined in a
riot of allegoric reflections of the six other sins, thus making it the epitome
of the human vanities.
It has everything, it is everything.
There is only room for this one being in this entirely closed blue velvet case
(Yves Klein). It is only just that a maniacal examination will allow to discover
in a spherical mirror (close to that of the “Wedding of the Arnolfini” by J. Van
Eyck) a non delirious reverse shot: the camera and the operators turning the
photograph. But does the creative movement ever come to man in a period of
humility, or in those periods of playfulness they belie to be well being, and
which on the contrary only the spirit of provocation of the gods at its highest
tension (Jean Giraudoux)?
Nevertheless, jauntily seated on the superb “Herztüte” of Verner Panton, on his
screen the half lighted globe, is merely a mezza terra. – One can do nothing all
alone.
Etienne Tombeux 2006
Translation french to english by Jan Melis
The Seven Deadly Sins
GLUTTONY
In order to decline this vice, one male glutton and three female gluttons: the
nymphomaniac bourgeoise: the overeater, the hunter-drinker, the dandy-drug
addict. Four stereotypes for an image of a “gently devastated”
busy-home-magazine.
And, in this interior as hot as a belly, four colder openings: the night at the
window, the blue and green of two backrooms, the grey snow of a television
screen and the reflections of the early dawn at the “door with the wolf”.
Except for this gluttonous wolf, our friends the animals are dead, stuffed, cut
up, cooked, transformed.
What can one say about the showcase wit the twelve clocks all around the dial,
about a gold nugget extracted from a turd, about a hamper of oysters under a
crucifix, about the dart planted in the edge of the door, of the colt in the
green and five loafs on the floor at the foot of a mouldy wall?
What shall we say of the grimaces of that zealous butler, of the doe-eyes of the
living Rubens exposed on the table and reflected in the oval of a mirror cut out
like a stolen canvass?
- of all the stimuli thronging the painting?
Not a single drop of clear water in all this. And, in the middle, there is the
knob of the stick, a small sphere.
Etienne Tombeux 2006
Translation french to english by Jan Melis
The Seven Deadly Sins
SLOTH
The loss of inertia of the character of Accidia is his mortal Sin. This both
spiritual and physical paralysis has contaminated its environment; this cold
light, this infertile lunar soil, the three quarters walled in bookcase, the
proliferation of industrial waste pouring down from the ceiling or falling down
in cascades, the intricate network of evacuation-feeding scoring the room in all
directions, all this emanates from him through his data-glove and his sphincters.
Under his feet, the spheres become cubic.
To share his universe with the rat, the spider and the bat, five little
proletarian clones recycled from Metropolis, from a peplum or from the
Grand-Guignol repertoire make the machine go round, keep the house and allow
themselves a small refreshing nap, a little grand music (Rigoletto or
Schönberg?) under a proof, pinned to the wall, of an as yet unknown English
photographer, and even a surprised look at the camera. Behind the grimy window
and beyond the bars someone (Breughel) has lit a fire in the night. How cold the
water must be on the shelf in that half full…and empty jar.
Etienne Tombeux 2006
Translation french to english by Jan Melis
The Seven Deadly Sins
WRATH
with: THE TIGER LILLIES Martyn Jacques, Adrian Stout, Adrian Huge
and: Haymon Maria Buttinger, Martina Theresia Stilp and a lot of others
Collective Wrath.
Exterior day.
We are outside a surrounding wall of the House transformed into a fortress.
The windows are boarded, the portal where a standard flows is a check point
barricaded with sandbags; nearby lies a carbonized body at the feet of the
carcass of a burnt down vehicle, imbedded in the blackened wall. In front of the
besieged house, up to the river and the skirt of the small wood, the earth has
been burnt ; there still are , here and there, small fires smoking and a stack
of books has been committed to the flames.
The characters of London cult-band THE TIGER LILLIES are performing a kind of
slap-stick battle inbetween single humans - the cause of collectiv wrath – the
central scene in our image: A networking fake golf playing so called businessman
and a moyen age woman out of boschs painting are going to kick ass while the
contemporary medusa is mocking them and the whole scene.
Further to the left, two guys are torturing a third one using electricity,
whereas, behind the scene, strange fruits in orange overalls are hanging from
the branches of a tree of the beautiful wood. Pursuing our survey towards the
left, we observe in the plane a tank (and a decapitate elephant head out of
Babylon) and – under different colours – a troop of soldiers before which an
adolescent girl flees, arms dangling, naked, the body burnt by napalm. To the
right of this offensive, in the background, near the tent of a field hospital,
its bloody wounded on their stretchers, the medical staff in green outfits and
nurses in bloody white. And closer to us, on the level of the fleeing young girl,
a bomb crater from which a mutilated body of a child emerges, maybe an execution
nearby .
On the side of this the well-dressed-prada-sexy-TV-lady, microphone in hand,
entertaning the TV-consumer, who of course is going to be the spectator of our
image.
Another television team is filming somewhere in the back – the medias have to
produce quotes. Behind them, we can see, amidst the poplar trees, a group of
refugees, women, children and old people, their faces protected by gas masks,
dragging their belongings. They are on the way to the small bridge far away
where silhouettes are waiting for them.
On the other side of the road, on a rougher ground, other soldiers – different
uniforms and different colours – are laying in ambush.
And here comes the wall again – over which we see, in the background, the summit
of a burning silo and an executed angel. - Wrath arround – anybody noticed?
Hüller / Tombeux 2006
Translation french to english by Jan Melis
|
