HANABI is a one minute five second video film that is projected in a loop. Fireworks explode, fly into the sky, burst open through reversed processing in black & white. The night sky becomes white, while the exploding missile is as black as the ink in a Chinese calligraphy. Smoke, powder and pyrotechnics are combined with drawing and writing. Calligraphics inscribed on a video band turns the artist's gesture into an explosion and the rapidity of a rocket: direct, efficient and light as air. The fire that has turned black as coal for a fraction of a second, becomes solid matter for the duration of its appearance - a fraction of a second.

A volume thus permits itself to be seen, much like a sculpture that would fly through the air of space and creating the illusion of a strange autonomy that is directed by chance movements. A short time, but sufficiently long to remain printed in the mind's eye.

Embryonic sculptures, peripheral smoke that remind one of pigments - this internal breath of artistic explosion weaves a web between the work and the spectator that only lasts the time of a few useful breaths during a single minute and a few seconds. One also recognises certain domestic fireworks used to celebrate birthdays - that remind us more of personal remembrances, than of public celebrations. It is precisely the line between artificial and intimate landscapes that Amanda Riffo's video film puts into question.

Text by Yann Delacour

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