These fixed-frame works depict enclosed, deserted, dark spaces
in which presences appear, pass through, or briefly occupy the environment.
Alone, they seem to ignore the camera.
Originally, this architectural imagery refers to the urban legend
of the Backrooms, which appeared in May 2019 on a forum.
This legend describes places accessible by passing through a wall or floor,
plunging the individual into a parallel, empty, and unsettling dimension.
The associated images stage
stairwells,
hotel corridors,
or deserted supermarkets,
sparking a latent oppression.
This feeling of strangeness partly comes from the concept of Kenopsia,
which denotes the unique atmosphere of a place once lively but now abandoned.
By sharing these images, internet users contributed to the creation of
a collective narrative around a liminal aesthetic,
where empty spaces, seemingly innocuous, become surreal and unsettling.
My films belong to this liminal aesthetic,
staging actions emptied of their original meaning by the nature
of these isolated environments.
Through simulations and repeated gestures or behaviors,
these figures reappear relentlessly, trapped in a loop, in a frozen space-time.
The repetition questions the very notion of beginning and end.
Is there an exit?
Darkness, pixelation, and blur generate apprehension, a shiver,
recalling the aesthetic of found footage and video archives.
The filmed loops thus become representations of mental states:
madness, isolation, oblivion, confinement, fear.
Here lies the Unheimlich, or uncanny, as defined by Freud.
A blurred boundary between reality and the supernatural,
where the inexplicable creeps into the familiar.
This disturbance pushes the viewer to question
their own perception of reality and the very nature of space-time.