Nearby is a video installation alternating motionless scenes of solitary young women in their indoor environments and long sequence shots of deserted landscapes. It is projected on a large screen, in what Laetitia Bénat would like to be a comfortable setting in order to recreate an intimate atmosphere.

The video begins with a closely framed shot of an apartment interior focused on a desk, with a young woman is lying down listening to music in the background. She dozes off, smokes a cigarette, goes through a whole series of little actions in order to wile away her boredom. The occasional blurring of the image reinforces the feeling of melancholy generated by the situation. The sound track includes both the music the main character is listening to and the background noise of the city. Within a space which remains confined, neither the young woman nor the viewer has any perspective.

The segment with the deserted landscapes begins a few minutes later. It was shot in the year 2000 in the Cévennes mountains of central France with a super 16 movie camera. The quality of the image differs from that of the first part, with a particular grain and a more bluish defined colouring. Bénat films the Cévennes landscape with special attention to the sky streaked with birds in flight, the arid-looking mountainsides and the surface of a body of water in movement.

The music accompanying these images is composed of electronic frequencies. The sound track also serves to link together the two parts of the video, the interior and exterior scenes. The music resembles a humming sound, like a very rough, almost prehistoric signal which recalls the aridity of the nature being filmed. Its use of loops is a frequent technique in electronic music.

The narration alternates between interior and exterior scenes. The shots of nature refer us back to an inner state of the character shut up in her bedroom. But rather than providing an escape, this nature, agitated and dangerous, constitutes a threat, and this feeling is reinforced by the soundtrack.

Through the way she films, Bénat breaks with the painterly tradition of romantic, hospitable nature, the crucible of a primeval purity. Underneath an apparent serenity, there is an increasing sensation of confinement emanating from the interior scenes. The long outdoor sequence shots also recall the feeling of waiting associated with the female character, who continuously performs activities within the closed space of her room.

Bénat's world is close to that of the American artist Sadie Benning in her penchant for filming her own circle of friends as well as that of French artist Rebecca Bournigault in her use of self-fiction.  The 1990s saw the emergence, notably in France, of a current of intimist video which gave free rein to the artists' inner states and feelings and which, in their view, would be impervious to all interpretation. A work like Nearby, for example, is thus defined as an encounter, an emotion which the artist wants to share, without introducing any particular meaning.

Laetitia Rouiller