Video, 7'10'', and series of giclee prints, 2013 This projet was realised thanks to the support of esbanm (école supérieure des beaux-arts de Nantes Métropole). When tourists travel abroad, they are willing to see remarkable landmarks : the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building or the Niagara falls. In this respect, the purpose of my recent stay in Japan was very unusual. In my case, the attractions I was coming to "see" were invisible. These were unbuilt projects conceived throughout the years by several generations of architects : Kenzo Tange's 1960 plan for Tokyo, Arata Isozaki's Clusters in the Air, Kiyonori Kikutake's Eco Polis but also Buckminster Fuller's Triton City or Norman Foster's Millenium Tower. This was a very strange feeling, and a very strange experience too. Chasing the streets of Tokyo, I tried hard to see this other Tokyo, in my mind if not through my eyes. For example, going to Tokyo bay I spent a lot of time "contemplating" buildings that were not there, imagining their shapes standing out against the empty sky. The video "Ghost Tokyo" is about this unbuilt Tokyo. It tries to represent it but also to "show its absence". I achieve this paradoxical goal by cuting the shape of various unbuilt landmarks out of the video sequences I shot during my stay. The recreated buildings only appear as blank, empty spots but ironically they would not be visible if they were not erased. The goal of this video is to poetically conjure up images of some aborted futurs.
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