IN A RUSH

LIVE CINÉ-CONCERT / COLOUR / LIVE PERFORMANCE WITH TWO MUSICIANS

The images that compose In a Rush were filmed in New York in 2005 during the making of Man with Van, a portrait of Keith Streng. That work was originally presented as a video installation the same year as part of the exhibition Var et Ailleurs at Hôtel des Arts – Centre méditerranéen d’art contemporain. Several sequences, however, remained unseen — existing only as raw rushes that had never previously been shown.

When Pascal Billot and Sergio Zamparo invited me to collaborate on a live cine-concert project, these dormant images naturally resurfaced. Their raw, instinctive visual material immediately resonated with the musical universe of Modern Avenue. Left untouched for almost twenty years, the footage has since acquired a new emotional and documentary dimension, shaped both by the passage of time and by the profound urban transformations experienced by the filmed neighbourhoods — particularly Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

The film’s visual language is built through rhythmic and chromatic variations: slow motion, superimpositions, inversions, shifts of speed and texture. Certain passages drift toward a form of visual psychedelia, flirting with abstraction and recalling the experimental explorations of Kenneth Anger or Stan Brakhage, while others unfold through the duration of contemplative static shots, closer to the urban and sensory approach of Chantal Akerman or the filmed diaries of Jonas Mekas. Between effusion and restraint, the work constructs its own audiovisual language within the lineage of experimental cinema.

A central aspect of the project lies in the way the images were reworked to function as an integral part of the overall musical score. They are not conceived as visual accompaniment, but as an active component of the rhythmic, emotional and narrative structure of the piece. The editing was guided by the music: the image reacts, resists, extends or converses with sonic motifs within a shared compositional logic. Sound and image become inseparable, woven together into a single audiovisual material.

A fragmentary narrative gradually emerges through the sequences. Nothing is stated explicitly, yet connections, gestures and figures begin to surface. Characters appear and disappear in fragments within the continuity of a world in motion. There is no linear storyline, only echoes, causal impressions and traces of memory. A narrative forms indirectly, somewhere between urban experience, imagination and remembrance.

At the crossroads of experimental film, sensory documentary and live audiovisual performance, In a Rush proposes a visual and sonic journey — an open narrative space where memory, movement and perception intertwine.

Direction:
Denis Vedelago

Music:
Pascal Billot
Sergio Zamparo

Lighting technician:
Julien Huraut

Technical information:
Duration: 1 hour.