RQV2
Rivesaltes Project
These are video-walks through ruins and across scrub in a former concentration camp at Rivesaltes in the south of France, between the Mediterranean and the mountains on the edge of a motorway. Refugees have been held here during the dark episodes of the twentieth century: the Spanish Revolution, WW2 when thousands of Jews were sent from here to Auschwitz, the Algerian War of Independence, and recently, Eastern Europeans without visas seeking a better life.
This work is not only an experience of a particular place with a shocking history, but also of the act of seeing through the lens of the camera... usually those fleeting, almost missable images emerge as the video progresses. I treat these reminiscences in the same way we recall the intangible but very real history of this place - almost touching a memory that is beyond our own experience.
You can read about the evolution of the Rivesaltes Project (including first-hand research and use of original documentation) on my blog: http://jonathan-moss.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2009-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2009-05-16T14:25:00-07:00&max-results=27&start=26&by-date=false
The accompanying photos are of a video-projection of the Rivesaltes Project videos at the Rivesaltes camp . (Photo credits: Peter Watkins.)
These are video-walks through ruins and across scrub in a former concentration camp at Rivesaltes in the south of France, between the Mediterranean and the mountains on the edge of a motorway. Refugees have been held here during the dark episodes of the twentieth century: the Spanish Revolution, WW2 when thousands of Jews were sent from here to Auschwitz, the Algerian War of Independence, and recently, Eastern Europeans without visas seeking a better life.
This work is not only an experience of a particular place with a shocking history, but also of the act of seeing through the lens of the camera... usually those fleeting, almost missable images emerge as the video progresses. I treat these reminiscences in the same way we recall the intangible but very real history of this place - almost touching a memory that is beyond our own experience.
You can read about the evolution of the Rivesaltes Project (including first-hand research and use of original documentation) on my blog: http://jonathan-moss.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2009-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2009-05-16T14:25:00-07:00&max-results=27&start=26&by-date=false
The accompanying photos are of a video-projection of the Rivesaltes Project videos at the Rivesaltes camp . (Photo credits: Peter Watkins.)
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