Development of chance  1995

 

"Words are written on strips of paper. Sentences are created randomly as they scroll"

Nathalie Rao, 1995

 

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  Having abandoned painting on leaving his art school in Cergy-Pontoise. Nathalie Rao starts to work with devices like super 8 and video, tools to see, video in Latin. In fact, she entrusts herself to the machine, in automatic mode, to record what she is looking at simultaneously. However, she tries to get out of the frame, not accepting the limited view of these tools to replace it with a vision, which is inevitable to avoid. Because this framework exists everywhere in the landscape, everywhere in communication. It is an extremity of our apprehension. You don't have to be locked in there, but stand on the edge. For this reason, Nathalie Rao also doubts the language; this communication tool traps us in the likelihood of understanding. We think we share the same conception, but on what dimension, to what degree? the zero degree of the language could occur at the moment when one is silent.

Nathalie Rao goes out into the city, the huge and vast setting that surrounds us. She installs there the large posters taken from negatives found in the street, then she takes photos of this discreet setting in space of the environment: incongruous memory traces as much as melted into the landscape, as we say fade-in, unframing of life, more by cropping. Nathalie Rao breaks down the frames of the existing and the non-existent to make reality testify about itself. Thus we witness the miraculous and daily spectacle of the street, which the artist records in his head to redo the scene destined to be then filmed.

Recovery and lining. At the heart of Nathalie Rao's project, there is chance, as much experience  and stakes in (oneself) encountering the surprises of destiny.

On the strips of paper, we find words like, love, body, error, space, the unspeakable, work, dies, is born. The necessities of life are represented by the noun, the verb and the adjective meeting by chance. Words in the crowd. The coincidence is caused by the sliding of rolls of paper which turns around a metal bar.

The words are chosen because they are Nathalie Rao's main concerns, but completely detached from their contexts, exposed bare. Here, the artist experiments with the possibility of mastering the luck of nature. The path that leads us to encounter the wonder of life.

Is it possible to unravel the mystery? the question remains and Nathalie Rao continues her search, wondering who am I?

 

Lili Ryu kim