As star travellers we find ourselves at a location in space, on the Earth, within the period of December 22 to June 22. Seen from the northern hemisphere, this is the period in which winter falls on the days between the "shortest" and the "longest" days of the year, a period of repentance and rest, of renewal and rebirth. The play of light and shadow glistens through frosted windows. Slow, long shadows accompany the wind that whistles through clothes and cracks, and whose sound refers to the letter "S", the first letter that Marconi sent across the Atlantic in December 1910, using wireless telegraphy. The "S" of star, Stonehenge, spider and sun... The shimmer of the sun upon the water appears at the beginning and the end of the tape, an image of man's first communication with the universe, and an emblem of the network of waves that seek to receive and transmit the human being.
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Technical information
Documentation
Commentary by Nicole Gingras, Curator
Solstice is a meditation on light and immobility. The video collects complementary elements : the relationship between light and darkness, complicity between image and sound, tension between motion and immobility. The solstice is winter’s shortest day and summer’s longest. It is also the instant when the sun appears to stand still because of the Earth’s position at either extreme of its elliptical orbit. This video echoes the solstice’s association with motionlessness and the cyclical nature of time.
