Armand Morin graduated from the Beaux-Arts in Nantes in 2007. His work explores man-made landscapes and their artificiality, the presence of scenery in our everyday environment, collage and montage as a means of creating third places, the relationship between documentary and fiction, and the consumption of space through leisure and tourism.

Reliefs – 2022

Reliefs is a video work that combines a documentary approach with a story-like narrative. It focuses on spaces shaped by various human activities of extraction and production, with particular emphasis on landscapes made up of slag and other residues.

Among the places filmed with a drone are the vast expanse of agricultural greenhouses around Almeria (ES), the gigantic coal mines south of Cologne (DE), slag heaps in the Pas-de-Calais (FR), salt pans in Occitanie (FR), a landfill site for bauxite residues in Provence (FR) or a seawater desalination plant in Andalusia (ES), complemented by studio shots where models represent other inaccessible places.

A scrolling text tells the story of the evolution of a living, mystical and superstitious species, increasingly greedy and self-satisfied. Through the text, the functions and symbolism of the filmed places are reassigned.

This obvious parable with the human species allows us to explore these fascinating and terrifying sites, to rediscover those areas on which our food and comfort depend and which we would like never to see.

The pulsating music composed by percussionist Will Guthrie accompanies this frenetic progression of the story to the point of saturation, bordering on implosion.

From samples of an increasingly rapidly depleted planet, Reliefs offers a fantastic vision teeming with references to the ecological catastrophe we are experiencing.

Armand Morin’s artistic work is presented in collaboration with Le Botanique, Bruxelles.