This work is the outcome of a specific encounter and of the secret affinities every artist nurtures with some radically different form of expression. Writer Laurent Gaudé and photographer Oan Kim have created a narrative in which a clash between photographs and text can generate an interpretation and a vision that derives from them but also opens the way to a hypothetical, ambivalent imagination. In a devastated, apocalyptic setting where order and light seem to have been abolished, ghostly beings go about indeterminate activities. A man—perhaps a survivor whose mind is still functioning—wanders the deserted streets, soiled urban spaces devoid of people, wondering why they have all apparently vanished, leaving everything behind. But this hallucinatory roam will gradually reveal to the walker hidden ‘forms’, tucked away and almost invisible to the hurried eye, which turn out to be the singular, tragic presences and stigmata of a forgotten population. Letting his pain and rebelliousness swell up, the man—if he is still such a thing—addresses God, violently conveying to him the reality of his incommensurable absence. Oan Kim has created an otherworldly city, lit by monochromatic suns and stained by inky shadows. In this context, rain, urine, garbage and graffiti become actors in a subterranean theatre, and corrode and destroy us without our being aware of it.
B.R.