Pop (blue time)

2005 - Installation (Installation)

Saâdane Afif

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Blue time is a song co-written by artists Saâdane Afif and Lili Reynaud Dewar. Collaborations are frequent in the work of the Afif, as is the case of the exhibition “Lyrics” which opened at the Palais de Tokyo in 2005, in which Saâdane Afif asked artists and musicians to translate his artworks into song lyrics and interpret them. The lyrics written on the wall produced a silent story, in a musical way that remains implicit (unlike certain installations by the artist where lyrics can be heard on headphones). The writing in hologram print displayed on the wall recalls the iridescent surface of CDs. The refrain “I’ve be waitin’…” introduces temporality and musicality in the field of meaning. This song is a commentary on pop music with a meta-poetic dimension. It depicts the life of a songwriter: “I ‘ve been waitin’ for the producers […] I left home when I was a kid […] I’ve been on the road indefinitely […] I played in bars, hotels, parties.” Like in “Actualité” a 16mm film by Matthia Poledna from 2001, Saâdane Afif and Lili Reynaud Dewar paint a nostalgic and idealized portrait of the artist as a pop star. Saâdane Afif practices the quote: “I belong to a generation of artists who {…} discuss art as a form of language, with which you play upon, you deform, you transform, without focusing on the object as it was before.” Such strategies of

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Saâdane Afif practices the quote: “I belong to a generation of artists who {…} discuss art as a form of language, with which you play upon, you deform, you transform, without focusing on the object as it was before.” Such strategies of re-appropriation insert themselves inside a context of idea circulation, as a form of remixing and remaking. In the work “Pirates Who’s Who,” tactics of assemblage are recognizable on all levels. The artist makes use of an eccentric shelf by designer Ron Arad, displaying dripping paint on the wall while the shelf itself holds a collection of books on piracy, compiled together by the owner of the work. “Power chords” (2005), perhaps the most ambitious project by the artist to date, is both a work for publication and several exhibitions. The installation depicts automatic electric guitars, playing scores orchestrated by a computer program. The chords are defined by color sequences derived from André Cadere’s wooden segments. Yet with Afif’s displacement, the artist hints to the color and rhythmic sound dimensions vis-à-vis Cadere, inside a genre of synesthesia. In an age of numerical technology, Cadere’s rhythmic system echoes in a particular manner together with the processes of digitization. Afif suggests a principle of encoding the world underlying the real, or rhythmic language before the Tower of Babel. Saâdane Afif was born in 1970 in Vendome, France. He lives and works in Paris and Berlin.

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Colors:

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• translation.n.01
• interpretation.n.01
• narrative.n.01
• music.n.01
• lyric.n.01
• french contemporary artists