Europe
Mohamed Bourouissa
Temps Mort (Dead Time or Time Out)
2009
Mohamed Bourouissa, Temps mort, 2009. Video.
The film Temps Mort (Dead Time or Time Out) presents an exchange of short video footage assembled into one final edit. Remotely driven footage of daily life in prison, the banality of a sink, of a plant or a plate of pasta are offtset against scenes of life outside, in the streets of Paris, a night of love or seascapes. The dialogue between the inmate and the artist occurs by text messages and captures this exceptional situation of exchange, sharing et perhaps dependence. As the tie between the two men develops, the confrontation between life inside and out of those walls intensifies. Like his previous work, it is interesting to compare this with the documentaries screened in the general media about violence in the suburbs or in prisons.
Mohamed Bourouissa became known in the 2000s with a series of photographs on young people in the suburbs of Paris. His work later evolved into video, sculpture, and installation, but remained focused on issues related to immigration and the social-economic processes that lead to integration or exclusion. He describes contemporary society implicitly, by outlining its contours. With a critical take on the mass media image, the subjects of his photographs and videos are people left behind at the crossroads of integration and exclusion. Preceded by a long immersion phase, each of Mohamed Bourouissa’s projects builds a new enunciation situation.