Jean-Claude RUGGIRELLO
1994
5'12''

Jean-Claude Ruggirello is a strange artist, and not a young one at that (he is in his fifties). He has never really pursued a career but, always lopsidedly, created videos the wrong way, without using theories, only his capacity to invent. There are many ideas in his videos, but they seem effortless. He doesn’t push himself too hard. One of his very first videos to be exhibited, in the Galerie de Paris, showed an inclined take where all kinds of objects were sliding down at different speeds depending on their weights. Nothing but extremely normal stuff. And then, with a flick of the finger, on the image, thanks to his camera that he tilted in the same direction, Ruggierello straightened up the inclined take to the horizontal. As a result, rushing by at different speeds, but on a horizontal plane now, the objects seem struck by this “disturbing strangeness” which has fascinated surrealists and which fascinates us also, here. With “Angström” (1'37), we find ourselves in a more or less similar situation. In still video, there is a huge pile. Indeed, a huge pile. In front of us. Immobile. Brown. A vaguely oval-looking ball. Why has Jean-Claude Ruggirello filmed this? In still video, this immobile object. And then, after a long moment, from the object stems out a kind of excrescence, then one more: paws. A roundish back, a tortoise’s – because it is indeed a tortoise – straightens up, puts itself on its paws. Cut. Ruggirello creates videos which bring in a sense of play and nonsense and make us aware of how much truth, fortuitous sense, resides in a third term, always disruptive. He isn’t on the look- out for laws, nor rules, but in fact for the exception.