Cinéfondation team 2014

Une Vie Radieuse

UNE VIE RADIEUSE / A RADIANT LIFE

Fiction experimental 

France 2013, 17'33 

1:66 - Color - NB

FR / ENG SUB 

 

1952, la Cité Radieuse de Marseille reçoit ses premiers occupants, 80 fonctionnaires et des dédommagés de guerre venant des quatre coins de la France. Certains sont portés par l’idéal que promet Le Corbusier. A son arrivée, un couple expérimente les lieux, l’équipement, l’espace qui lui est imparti. L’un comme l’autre réagit à son nouvel habitat, Sa singularité, ses précisions. Le corps interroge l’utopie. nouvel Eden mis au monde en pleine reconstruction, La Cité Radieuse, version courte de la Ville Radieuse, flotte sur l’après-guerre comme si rien ne s’était passé. A son bord, s’installent le froid, la solitude et la stérilité.

1952, The Radiant City of Marseille receives its first occupants, eighty civil servants and compensated from war, coming from the four corners of France. Some are led by the promise of Le Corbusier’s ideals. Upon arrival, a couple experiments the location, facilities, and space allotted to them. They each respond to the new habitat. Its uniqueness, its details. The body questions the utopia. New Eden born under the reconstruction, The radiant city floats on the after-war As nothing happened. On board, settled cold, loneliness and sterility.

 

(c) Meryll Hardt - Le Fresnoy Studio National des arts contemporains

FULL CAST AND CREW
   
With Meryll Hardt - Patrick Blauwart- Dr. Brabant. The voices of Daniel Dobbels, Jordan Gauthier, Christophe Vanheule, Sofiane Belaibi, Chantal Salmon, Lyne K, Léonore Mercier, Meryll Hardt. 
Director of Photography : Delphine Ménoret, Julien Guillery
Camera Assistant : Julien Hogert
Props : Maxime Mercadier
Make up / Hairstylists  : Lisa Keuchguerian, Clothilde Legrand, Valérie Bisbrouck.
Costume Design : Sylvie Dermigny

Editing: Meryll Hardt
Compositing / Calibrating : Raphaël Thibault
Audio Ingineer : Jérôme Noirot, Felix Kubin
Audio Assistants :  Antoine Sugita, Mathieu Lambin
Audio Editor / Mixer : Remi Mencucci
Original soundtrack : Meryll Hardt, Julie Normal, Accident du travail

Contact / diffusion :

Natalia Trebik

ntrebik@lefresnoy.net
http://www.facebook.com/unevieradieuse

  "An unsettling retro science-fiction film, A RADIANT LIFE explores the grim side of Le Corbusier’s utopic visions of the ideal city. In a masterful blend of archive materials, choreography and fiction, MERYLL HARDT examines the alienation raising when the need for geometrical harmony of space overshadows the need for human warmth. The coldness of the concrete sneaks into the character’s lives, while the sterility of the house becomes a sterility of human relationships. The radiant city proves unable to support life. The living space turns from home into a concrete cage. 

Centering the story around a 1950s housewife, the film poignantly underlines the sense of constraint and rigidity. Bit by bit, the characters are infected by the environment’s sterility. Individuality is lost, as movements and gestures lose their freedom and expressivity and become a rehearsed choreography. In a geometrical décor, the mise-en-scène fragments the protagonist’s body, revealing the completely alienating and dehumanizing aspects of life in what is more a cage than a home.” 

Diana Mereoiu, BIEFF 2013

INTERVIEW WITH FORMAT COURT 

On the other hand / Vennestraat Project / Manifesta 9 Parallel Event

On the other hand
Two digital videos, colour, sound 8' PAL 16/9

(c) Meryll Hardt. OTOH Genoa / Genk 2012.

"On the other hand" finds its roots in a story that had been reported to me. The story of an Italian young woman who arrived in Genk (Limbourg - Belgium)  with her family in the mid-sixties while the first mine crises and the strikes were on the point to happen. A young woman who was spending a lot of time imagining that her sister - who stayed in Italy - was just behind the hedge of her garden. 

The project pictures two characters, one based in Genk and the other one based in the North part of Italy.
The first character is the young immigrant, living and working in Genk as a cleaning lady at C-mine, but also an operator of a shut cinema where some posters have turned yellow.
Actions take place in 2012 but it is not fully revealed, she rather appears like a pre-1968 character.
Such as the young woman of the original story, she is in connection with some disseminate marks of her native country.
She is juxtaposed to a double, her twin sister stayed in Liguria. 

Her routine face the melancholic tour trip of her sister.
This second character, the italian sister, is at the edge of the frame.

Between the camera eye and the focus, she is watching Italia, re-enacting memories, typical scenes and clichés (hitting the aesthetic a postal card off). A tour that takes the bedroom - and the view that a bed along an open window can offer - as its starting and ending point.


Co-curatoria Michela Saccheta & Fransceca Berardi
Vennestraat Hidden Places and Identities
Genk Manifesta 9 - Parallel event.

(!) the videos below are supposed to be played together side by side with head phones or another way to switch from soundtrack to another.

Ligne Obscure at Ars Justitia

Performance at the opening of the new courthouse of Liège

Salle du tribunal de commerce.

18h40

Curated by Eric Therer.

I can die happy

Can I die happy?

"I can die happy" is the result of a single improvisation on an instrumental version of "Love walked in" by George Gershiwn. 
Ignoring the song that Ira Gershwin later added to the composition for the"Goldwyn follies" (1937) , I took the freedom to create a new song on Georges Gerswhin's original composition, re-interpretated by Joe Loss and his orchestra in 1954.

Playing this instrumental from a found record collected in Bruxelles's streets has been the occasion to rethink the piece before its use by golden age  entertainement. It has been an elegant way to project myself in the historical context of its re-interpretation, 1954, in between Alain Turing suicide and atomic paranoia.

In last september, Gagarin Records gave this track the opportunity of a new embodiement via an Apolkalypso 7 inch.

 

 

One side: I can die happy (3:02)
Other side: Lichtspiel (3:50)

NOW AVALAIBLE ON GAGARIN RECORDS 

In her search for continuity and resonance, Meryll Hardt resuscitates bodies of the past and beheads the space-time relation; preferring to double herself while doing so. Whether through improvised singing over old dance orchestra recordings or the Lichtspiel (play of lights) between Strasbourg, Berlin and Brussels: Meryll is constantly detecting the secret corners between the conscious and the unconscious, and light and shadow. With her heart and kidney wide open, she joyfully stitches her finds into a cosmos of its own.

Felix Kubin

Yeah I'm still searchin'

Documentary essay 40'  
DV Pal 4/3

+ Book (19,5x13,5) 12 pages 
Non commercial use only / limited edition
Ecole de Recherche Graphique
Bruxelles 2011
(Diffusion : on demand at me.hardt@hotmail.com)

Thanks to : Guillaume Désange, Loraine Furter, Annik Leroy, Hannah Geise/Moemlien, Juliette Mélampyre, Jonathan Boutefeu for their support and participation.

Winner of Discovery price at 
FESTIVAL DU FILM SUR L'ART (ISELP Bruxelles 2012) 

"Yeah I'm still searchin '" is a documentary essay taking as its starting point In search of the miraculous last aborted performance work of Bas Jan Ader, dutch conceptual romantic artist. As a quest of the metaphysic that led the artist to his loss, In search of the miraculous was a performative work splitted into three  "acts".

PART I consisted in a night walk in Los Angeles streets in the direction to the sea. It had been reported by photographies  taken by Mary Sue Ader (his wife) and had been exhibited successfuly at Claire Coppley Gallery. PART II consisted in the solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. known as a trained and experimented sailor, Bas Jan, unfortunatly never came back and was lost at sea, after several weeks of radio silence in between Cap Cop (U.S.A) and the british coasts.

In between his disappearance during summer 75' and the early 00' Bas Jan stayed more or less ignored by art circuits, not exhibited and presented and absolutly unknown from larger audiences. But in the early 2000, when his memory suddenly reappeared, Bas Jan inspired a lot of artists who gave tributes and tryed to walk in his shoes.

For my research, I questioned the issue of continuity and validity of a continuum, while considering the fact that the only existing documentary film existing on Bas Jan Ader, "Here is always somewhere else" (2008) had been directed  by Rene Daalder and co-produced by Aaron Ohlmann at the initiative of Mary Ader Sue Anderson, widow and former collaborator of Bas Jan. I got interest in the work of Bas Jan for his melancolic questionning of modernity, mocking at Mondrian and many other with the tone and elegance of Buster Keaton.

Bas Jan last aborded work, In search of the miraculous PART I  exhibition at Claire Coppley Gallery,  from which the postcard above had been the invitation (photo taken from another travel on sea) included two sets of photographs, referring a walk in the streets of Los Angeles, between dusk and dawn, in the direction of the beach.

Two sets of black and white prints on which the artist then wrote the lyrics of a popular song entitled "Searchin" performed  by the band The Costers.

The image above had been taken from this first part, it allowed me to enter the work of Bas Jan Ader in a positive way, by titling my work,  "Yeah I'm still searchin'."

The booklet coming with my documentary essay is to be taken as an attempt to think about this third part he never did. A rambling at night that was scheduled in Amsterdam after his Atlantic cross, echoing the first rambling, in Los Angeles streets.

My booklet  contains some photographs I took last September, two nights long, visiting Amsterdam with my friend Hannah Geise/Moemlien, Amsterdam based musician and fine artist.

For the exhibition of PART I "In search of the Miraculous" at Claire Coppley Gallery Los Angeles, a choir of students were asked to sing some sailor songs, including "A life on the Ocean Waves" written and composed by Henry Russel (1838), which also is the official hymn of the british navy.

I choised, for one sequence of my work to make a new cover of that track, with several voices of mine, like a choir, and to edit the track with Yuri Gagarin first flight in space footage, on April the 12th 1961. Yuri G. who unlike Bas Jan, came back from his solitary travel (in spite of some technical problems), with a now a day famous statment :"I see no God up there"

This video is the long cut version of an extract of one sequence of « Yeah I’m still searchin" which is not actually online, but visible on demand at meryll.hardt@gmail.com, for non commercial diffusion contexts such as seminars, free diffusions, school/research.

Der Reflex Des Defekt

Der Reflex Des Defekt from Meryll Hardt on Vimeo.


ERG Ecole de Recherche Graphique - 2011
Thanks to Annik Leroy, Alain Géronnez, Sammy Del Gallo

Der Reflex des defekt / the reflection of the defect is a collage  musical / performative small semi-improvised scenes and texts. The video is taking place in the raw space of Ecole de Recherche Graphique's garage. A huge place always of the point to be fixed and currently used as experimental exhibition space by students and teachers.