Night Rounds – Ciel variable Magazine

[Winter 2023]

No matter what the adage says, all cats are not grey in the dark. Night-time brings out a throng of personalities and countless activities. In nature, that’s when the wild animals finally take over. In the city, it brings out the ever-more-precarious side of the work world. And between these two poles, on the road, isolated outposts become welcoming refuges. The artists in this issue, as worthy observers, use various technological strategies to remind us of the importance of acting, living, and thinking in other ways.

ÉLIANE EXCOFFIER
Nightlife au mont Pinacle

Attentive to nature and animal life in wild settings, Éliane Excoffier undertook a project grounded in the preservation of a forest. With the support of a nature preserve, the Fiducie foncière du mont Pinacle, she positioned infrared cameras – those used by hunters – to record wildlife around a trail at night. The images in Nightlife au mont Pinacle certainly have documentary value. They also have the capacity to create a healthy encounter – indirect and unobtrusive – between animals and human beings.
with an essay by Yannick Marcoux

SANTIAGO TAMAYO SOLER
Neón

Created with images culled from a virtual navigation service, the video Neón offers a fictive journey punctuated with stops at possible bars, motels, and garages, along the byways of an imaginary Colombia. Santiago Tamayo Soler modi ed his source documentation to create mysterious places and convey other realities. Showing them at night, he elevates them with neon signs. This made-up lighting is an invitation to see a landscape, or a region, in ways other than through its clichés and usual features.
with an essay by Edward Pérez-González

EMMANUELLE LÉONARD
Black Out : Les livreurs / The Deliverers

When people had to stay home to avoid spreading COVID-19, home meal delivery became (almost) an essential service. The two curfew periods documented by Emmanuelle Léonard form the series Black Out : Les livreurs/The Deliverers. Focusing on these nocturnal workers with thermal cameras, she highlights the energy they deploy as they practise their trade. Her gaze highlights a social and economic sector too often in shadow.
with an essay by Gabrielle Sarthou

[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS ]
[ Complete article, in digital version, available here: Night Rounds ]