Catalogue > At random

In his work, Christian Barani questions and deconstructs the documentary's codes. It is not question of representation of the reality nor fiction but the experience. By summoning the walking and the drift, he involves another process of creation which generates a representation without a priori. He plays with fate and improvisation. No sequence is recorded twice. On the occasion of an exhibition entitled "Manifesto about the invisible cities", Olivier Marboeuf suggests to Christian Barani to direct a "drift" in Dubaï. This approach, appropriate for the artist, consists in walking in landscapes and cities. In this case, Dubaï is a town where nothing is thought for the moving body, a town built for and by the influx. It's a question of walking to get lost in these fiction spaces, and to build from the fate.

Christian Barani, born 1959, works and lives in Paris. He starts working with video in 1990, and founds the Moving Image department at the Nationale Supérieure school of Industrial Creation where he's been teaching for 17 years. In 2000, he co-founded a structure of artists' videos broadcasting, "estceunebonnenouvelle" bringing together a hundred of international artists and a collection made up of 500 movies. Inlaying, link to painting and poetry make up the axis of research of his first videos. Since 1997, his work questions and deconstructs the codes of documentary, through an experience engaging a body/camera in space, not a documentary nor a fiction. He directs linear movies, art installations, performances... His work has been shown in numerous festivals, museums and art centers in Europe, notably at the Centre Pompidou, at the Jeu de Paume, at the Lieu Unique in Nantes, at the MUSAC Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y Leon, at the National Museum Reina Sofia.