Brice Ammar-Khodja

Stillatim is the result of a transdisciplinary encounter that took place in 2016 at the IS2M materials science laboratory in Mulhouse. Located at the intersection of art and science, it explores the sensitive, symbolic, and epistemological relationships between these two disciplines in relation to one of the most fundamental substances of existence: water. Here, a new version of the installation originally developed in 2016 is presented.

At the center of an unlit room stands an elevated body of water, with its upper part penetrated by multiple beams of light. This sculpture of water and light evokes the homothetic figure of a microscope slide. A ghostly projection, barely visible to the naked eye, appears on the entire surface of the water.

It reveals a formula by Gaston Bachelard from “L’Eau et les Rêves” (1942). The French philosopher mentions, for the only time in the work, a mythological form of water represented in its most fragile materiality, a drop. The visitor can discern:

“A powerful drop of water is enough to create a world, and to dissolve the night.” (Bachelard, 1942, p. 21).

Disrupted by the sudden and sporadic appearance of a water drop, the text transforms for a few seconds into an almost illegible organic entity. The body of water seems to move silently in the darkness, yet the liquid remains static. The observed water drop does not operate in the materiality of reality; it is actually a video projection of a drop falling on a typographic composition.