The Bourse de Commerce presents BORDERLAND — Act XIV, a film by French artist Melik Ohanian, the eighth guest of the Pinault Collection’s artist residency program in Lens in 2021–2022. Initiated in 2017, BORDERLAND is a long-term work, now unfolding across fourteen acts and taking multiple forms through its different presentations.
Program:
- 7:30PM : conversation between Melik Ohanian and Dominique Quessada (writer and philosopher), moderated by Anne Bertrand (art historian and critic)
- 8PM: screening of the film BORDERLAND — Act XIV by Melik Ohanian (58 minutes). In English, with French subtitles.
“We are on a rooftop in Brooklyn. It is dawn or dusk. Or both. A space whose flatness sharply contrasts with the elevation surrounding it on all sides: at the four cardinal points, New York unfolds in its obsessive pursuit of verticality. Eighteen figures are there, motionless, indistinct, their individuality uncertain. We know nothing about them. We soon will. The roof is a border zone, a space where what will be dismantled is the very notion of the border itself: a BORDERLAND.”
Adapted from Rudy Wurlitzer’s book Flats (1969), the script, co-written with Dominique Quessada, takes place on the rooftop of the studio where Melik Ohanian worked in Brooklyn for several years. Shot in 2017, the film results from an omnivisional setup composed of four cameras placed on four tracking rails installed along the four sides of the nearly square rooftop: north, east, south, and west. Following these rails, and always visible in the image, the cameras move laterally and continuously from one corner to the other. The image reveals that these tracking movements are driven by cranks operated by the actors themselves. The film is thus composed of four continuous long takes, filmed without interruption over 55 minutes.
BORDERLAND — I Walked a Far Piece was first presented at the 14th Lyon Biennale in 2017 as a four-screen installation inviting viewers to occupy the center of the projection space. BORDERLAND (2017–2024) is not merely a film or a filmic device. As Melik Ohanian states: “BORDERLAND is a work that attempts to survive its exhibition.” It has therefore taken on various forms - film, performance, concert, writing, theory, lecture, etc. - all of which, in their own way, constitute the work.
About Melik Ohanian
Melik Ohanian (born 1969) is a French visual and multimedia artist for whom the exhibition is primarily a figure of time: a privileged site where relationships between space and temporality are replayed and recomposed.
This conception runs throughout his work and has been affirmed through numerous exhibitions in France and internationally, including The Time Before – Galerie Cristina Guerra, Lisbon (2022), Remember It Will Be Tomorrow – Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris (2023), Under Shadows – Centre Pompidou, Paris (2016), In Time – Galerie DVIR, Brussels (2016), Stuttering – CRAC de Sète (2014), Days, I See What I Saw and What I Will See – Sharjah Biennale (2011), Somewhere in Time – De Appel, Amsterdam (2006), and Seven Minutes Before – São Paulo Biennale (2004).
Melik Ohanian’s practice is conceived in terms of physical and conceptual territories, with time as its central axis. Nourished by research, scientific methods, and philosophy, his work unfolds across a multiplicity of media. Situated between science, philosophy, contemporary history, and visual arts, Ohanian explores and moves beyond the material aspect of the artwork through different formats. Drawing on a strong visual culture, he is inspired by cinematic procedures and contemporary projection techniques to question the status of the image and the concept of time.
In his works and installations, which interrogate modes of exhibition and exceed conventional image frameworks, the notion of time is approached through its relationship to reality and through the experience of duration. Placing the viewer in a state of exploration, the artist highlights the complexity of the gaps that, more or less visibly, shape our relationships with others, inviting us to question the constitutive and/or reflective realities of our world.
In 2015, he was awarded the Marcel Duchamp Prize and participated in the exhibition at the Pavilion of the Republic of Armenia at the Venice Biennale, which received the Golden Lion for Best National Pavilion. His permanent installation in Trembley Park in Geneva, Les Réverbères de la Mémoire, received the Visarte Prize in Zurich in 2019. He was also the eighth guest of the Pinault Collection’s artist residency program in Lens in 2021–2022.
