Champ Libre: Stéphanie Roland

Belgian artist Stéphanie Roland probes forms of unthought and invisible or opaque phenomena of Western civilization through the prism of photography, film, installation, performance and publishing,

From history to geopolitics, astrology to neuroscience, her practice crisscrosses different registers of images and narratives. His films explore imaginary, physical or mental territories on the margins – abandoned islands, abysses, polar zones – and adopt other points of view likely to embody the visual paradoxes specific to these invisible entities that influence political and economic systems and the course of history.

“The absence is terrifying and sometimes we need to fill it by telling stories.” This truth forms the prologue to 𝙋𝙤𝙙𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙖 𝙄𝙨𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙙, a filmic portrait of a ghost island off the Chilean coast whose existence is controversial. The narrative becomes more complex with the presence of three shipwrecked people in the vicinity of the hypothetical location of the island, wiped off the map in 1935 before re-emerging with the advent of the Internet. 𝘿𝙚𝙘𝙚𝙥𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙄𝙨𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙙 thwarts the spectacular patriotic narrative of the Belgian polar expedition to Antarctica (1897 – 1899) by revealing the disappointment of the adventure and the loss of meaning that gripped the crew who remained trapped in the ice for thirteen months. His most recent film essay, 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙀𝙢𝙥𝙩𝙮 𝙎𝙥𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 is akin to an inverted science-fiction voyage to Point Nemo, also known as the “pole of inaccessibility”. It stages the fall of a space object to this scene, this isolated area of the South Pacific where space debris washes up. (excerpt from a text by Marie Siguier, for the Cinéma Prospectif program at the Centre Pompidou)