2021 | SIMON BERTRAND
AFTERGLOW
MONTREAL
May 22 - Aug 14

May 22 - Aug 14, 2021

“At any one moment of our life, we are intertwined in all of humanity's past; a past that is essentially language. As W.S. Merwin puts it in his poem Utterance, the echo of all that has already been said constantly surrounds us.” S. Bertrand

In Afterglow, Bertrand combines a variety of symbols, imagery and texts from distant eras, showing links that exist between these isolated temporalities, like echoes. The first cuneiform writings, alchemical manuscripts, Jungian texts and recent scientific publications from CERN come together here, forming a long sentence that abolishes the limits of time.

In one sequence of these videos, pages from several books appear to take flight on the edge of a frozen lake beneath a precipice. In another sequence, near another rocky surface, books crash into one another in slow motion. The collisions of these books refer to the photons colliding almost at the speed of light in the particle accelerator at CERN.