Clarisse Hahn

Selected Works
Curated by Anne-Sophie Dinant
January 28th - February 24th, 2005

Exploring the documentary genre, Hahn creates feature length documentaries which are presented in cinemas and video installations. The often-extreme subject matter of Hahn‚s videos is combined with her sustained involvement in the lives of the people she films. She follows her subjects for a minimum of one year; observing, filming, interviewing, and becoming part of their daily life. Hahn spent time in the geriatric ward of a Hospital, followed and shared her flat with a French porn star and her husband. She recently recorded the daily life of Karima, a young Algerian dominatrix. Hahn‚s creations come from her desire for intimate communication with her subjects. Her interests lie specifically in showing how individuals deal and interact with their environment. The video works, combined or juxtaposed in installations, invite the viewer to make transversal readings of the works.

For this exhibition at t1+2 Clarisse Hahn will present the double-projection installation Ovidie/Hôpital. In Ovidie/Hôpital the activities of the porn actors and the patients and nurses of a geriatric ward no longer seem to contrast with one other and on the contrary reveal their similarities. Alongside this projection, her Boyzone series will be displayed on monitors. Started in 1998, Boyzone is an ongoing series of video works. For each exhibition they are presented in a different way, modulated differently within the space. In Boyzone, Clarisse Hahn observes and studies the male body and the situations of tension or fusion that can arise within a group. These installations allow the viewer a different degree of reading than the feature length documentaries due to being more direct in their visual and emotional nature.

Hahn‚s films lead the viewer towards a progressive understanding through her confidently balanced observation and rigorous analysis of the boundaries of representation. Her filmmaker‚s aesthetic, compositions, subtle editing of sound and image and her intimate interviews and recording, reveals an acute sense of creation leading to a peculiar crossing point between observation and deep introspection.

Clarisse Hahn was born in Paris in 1973 where she lives and works. She has recently exhibited at MAMCO, Genève, 2002; Museo National Centro de arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; HARDCORE, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2003; SMP, Marseille, 2004. Her new film Protestants will be released in the spring. She is represented in France by the gallery Jousse entreprise, Paris.