Culminating João Maria Gusmão’s ongoing filmic explorations of circadian rhythms, the artist presents two distinct cinematic interpretations of the lush greenery surrounding Silvia Fiorucci’s cottage and artist residency, the Moulin de Ribes, located near Grasse in the south of France. These films—one depicting the landscape by day and the other by night—offer complementary yet contrasting perspectives on the passage of time and the shifting nature of perception.
The daytime version immerses viewers in a slow-paced yet subtly disorienting journey through this pastoral setting. The film captures key elements of the landscape—the meandering river, glistening ponds, neatly aligned cypress trees, vibrant flower fields, and meticulously arranged bee houses—through a series of still shots animated solely by an optical device designed by Gusmão. This custom-built mechanism gradually distorts the scene, bending the image in a way that transforms the otherwise static square frame into a series of fluid, oscillating rhombus-like forms.
This visual effect recalls Henri Bergson’s reflections on perception and movement, particularly his assertion that objects are not perceived as fixed geometric entities but rather as a continuous flux of shifting shapes and angles. Bergson suggests that a table, for instance, does not appear to us as a stable, four-sided figure but rather as a succession of subtly distorted polygons, though our cognitive faculties construct a static mental representation of it.
By employing this technique, Gusmão challenges traditional cinematic conventions of landscape representation, proposing a reevaluation of framing, motion, and the act of seeing itself. His film invites the viewer to reconsider the relationship between vision, time, and the constructed nature of perception—engaging with the landscape not as a fixed tableau but as a constantly evolving, ephemeral experience.
