Boom 1996 ( 7)

The image shows a large, splendid tree standing in a green field, filmed on a summer’s day. The leaves move in the wind and the sun’s rays glide over the tree. After a moment of contemplation it seems to the viewer as if the tree is performing a kind of theatrical dance that contrasts moments of sunshine and shade.

The White House 2006

Lasting over thirteen hours, Claerbout's film shows two men engaged in a discussion against the back-drop of a neoclassical house in southern France. An act of violence is repeated and re-enacted more than seventy times over the course of the film. Dissolving the boundaries between photography and film, Claerbout’s work puts into question the reassuring stillness of photography and the inevitable narrative progress of the cinematic image.

Four Persons Standing 1999

‘Four Persons Standing' is based on an appropriated image, which I altered slightly. It is one of a few works that I made that has sound. The monotonous sound comes from two seconds that I took from a 1980s television series, facilitating a transition between two scenes, with no particular dramatic outcome. I limited movement to the nervous grain of a still from a video. Therefore the projected picture is just a still, and the sound is also a still. But at any moment, the characters - two men and two women - could interrupt the composition and move on with their lives. The picture's elements are dynamically imprisoned in their own composedness. They are on the brink of action, yet they never do; but then again, they could. I tried to make a found picture - lost in a book - act like a photograph.

Birdcage 2023