Trails and Traces

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Manon de Boer primarily works with film, and her art often subjects the medium itself to critical scrutiny; for example, she insistently probes the interplay between image and sound and questions the power of pictures as well as their claim to truth. Personal narrative and musical interpretation figure as both subjects and methodological registers of de Boer’s filmic portraits, which she composes as slow-paced fluid sequences of images. Most of the protagonists of her films are actors and actresses, musicians, dancers, and intellectuals. The characters gradually assume definite shape as their recollections unfold, emerging into view like photographic prints in the darkroom, and even the fully formed picture conceals at least as much as it reveals.

A series of works by de Boer investigates the nature of recollection: she films people as they speak about past incidents and experiences, often recording several sessions over an extended period of time. Occasional discrepancies and changing details along the edges of their accounts suggest the pliability of memory. In de Boer’s work, what one might also describe as the fragility or inconsistency of narrative not only draws attention to the mutable relationship between time and language; it also highlights the ways in which perception is dependent on the situational context and subject to subtle alterations. The use of voiceover narration adds another layer that transcends the sitter’s physical presence.

Reflecting the artist’s growing interest in the preconditions for creativity, her recent projects have dealt in one way or another with repetition, rhythm, reverie, the perception of (endless) time, (spaceless) space—and the idea of emptying one’s mind. “I regard these moments of aimlessness when you can let your mind wander, forget time, and clearyour head as an essential part of the creative process.”

De Boer finds theoretical support for her own observations and experiences in readings such as the work of the Britishpsychoanalyst Marion Milner (1900–1998), who studiedcreativity extensively, and the writings of the Canadian- American painter and Milner’s contemporary Agnes Martin, whose work she regards highly. Milner’s book An Experimentin Leisure (1937) and Martin’s text The Untroubled Mind (1972), in particular, not only contain interesting and stimu¬lating reflections that inspired de Boer; they have also given two of the films their titles.

The artist’s book Trails and Traces Manon de Boer has created on occasion of an exhibition in the Viennese Secession includes several film stills as well as excerpts from the conversations about Marion Milner and her theories and other relevant writings on related issues.

Texts: Manon de Boer sowie Giorgio Agamben, Roland Barthes, Lygia Clark, Sara De Roo, Latifa Echakhch, Sirah Foighel Brutmann, Yves Gevaert, Latifa Laâbissi, Agnes Martin, Marion Milner, Michael Schmid, Christophe Wavelet, Julia Wielgus, D. W. Winnicott