Charlotte Clermont

In keeping with her usual exploratory, material approach to images and sound, Charlotte Clermont has created a mosaic film, shot on Super 8 and 16mm stock, which she develops by hand and then augments with coloured ink. The camera takes in objects, plants, a landscape, bodies, a stretch of water, the air, wind. The scenes are short, often framed as close-ups. This unfurling of furtive moments, enigmatic spaces and blazing light plays out like a series of disorientations, sustained by a soundtrack that is every bit as rich and sensual.

Sunny. Semantic sequences guide the gaze, a gaze that is sometimes raised, propelled downwards, then too high or motionless in front of an unrecognizable and yet so familiar vision. The images, linked by echoes of chromatic palettes and linear layers, scroll to the rhythm of a voice, reminiscent of an incantation. Sacred.

You enter. Galaxy addictions and a blow of erotic thoughts. Soft reality and harsh dreams; seashell hearts are clinically observed. You are a Director/I am a Negociator. My feelings are hiding behind five black velvet curtains while maybe you say you never day (dream).

Charlotte Clermont’s where i don’t meet you presents a series of moving-image tableaus – interspersed with poetic intertitles evoking a breakdown in communication – that takes as much meaning from the hand-processed Super8 textures of the images themselves as it does its ongoing tension between the abstract and the specific.

Darkness never emerges but it is present. Some kind of teenage wasteland feel, unexpected storms and inviting landscapes are intermeshed. In a bewitching atmosphere, proximity and distance are revealed through a thoughtful structure where images and sounds confound the imaginary and the real. Sensuality and desire are seen as forbidden, somehow, as if faced with a glass wall. Only by looking back do we find ourselves in a moon-like space/place.

you’re a plant whisperer and for me, it’s enough studies the materiality of the analog image and the relationship between the musicality of the image and sound, in an attempt to create an introspective atmosphere. The video consists of two monochromatic shots generated using a VHS video mixer, each combining with a figurative image shot on Super 8 film. Treating colour as a conductor of emotions, all the images evoke inaccessibility, perfection and dream, in parallel with a meditative and transcendent soundtrack.

Maybe there was an opening, and they wandered through…

A telephone number constantly passes on the screen, superimposed on a fluorescent landscape, sowing confusion and absurdity. A description of colors becomes expressive, linking with images of bright, psychedelic flowers. The video bears witness to a playful and laborious exploration based on the integration of kitsch analog effects: image transitions and fonts. Having used a mixer and a video titler, the quality of the images allows a different reading of time and space, seeking to unbalance with fun and to reveal a delicate poetry. Unfolding in a playful tone, 514-835-9658 is a collaboration between visual and sound artists Charlotte Clermont and Julien Champagne.

A poetic and fragmented construction of images and text suggests failure and disillusion about romanticism. Intense psychedelic colours characterize images of flowers, as if they were struggling while maintaining a playful tone. Feelings of ambiguity are evoked, oscillating between the notions of the possible and the impossible, as well as attraction and repulsion. The project is an audiovisual collaboration with experimental musician Alain Lefebvre.

With tones of nostalgia and magic, a universe is revealed where personal and imaginary memories seems to become indissociable. VHS glitches distort misty and bright images, leading to a sentimental and mysterious narrative.

By using outdated analog cameras and live capture overlay projections, Parking Lot Attendant is a formal exploration of glitches and image processing, shared between contemplation, insistence and irregularity. This video is based on the free interpretation of a poem about boredom and its environmental components, proposing a fixed and fragmented portrait of daily life.