Cinema of exhibition? Autobiographical cinema? Never mind the definitions, a new kind of cinema is being invented by Clarisse Hahn, who mixes genres. (…) Her camera is like an extension of her body in the way she negotiates the world. But wether she is exploring her own family or evoking a protesting tribe across the ocean, it’s all a matter of fiddling the right distance.

Catherine Millet. Clarisse Hahn: People on the line. Art press, septembre 2012

Clarisse Hahn questions the codes associated with the “being-together”. Not only by filming communities the rites of which she examines in details, but by disrupting the contemplator/contemplated relation. (…) Clarisse Hahn has been studying the body in its intimate and social dimension. (…) She directly disrupts her shows, confronting violent scenes while establishing emotional relations with her protagonists. Although her body is rarely involved, she does not cease to “imperil her value system”. An involvement that allows a more immediate freeing of speech. With her way of approaching reality, she explores a new route: a route that nevertheless remains truly documentary, although it appears to be pushed to its outer limits, because it welcomes its transgressions. (…) Through her balancing act on the borderline by which she upsets our relation to the world, the protocols of contemporary art (the ambulatory habits) and the documentary devices (which she freely rearranges), she takes part in bringing about the necessary changes in the genres without ever confusing them.

Hospital
1999
Color video, duration : 56 minutes

what kind of habits does one develop when confronted with extreme situations on a daily basis? Shot in a geriatrics department, “Hospital” shows how the staff deals with bodies in various states of pain or decline, the strategies they use to structure their everyday life. By concentrating on technical gestures they are able to maintain a distance between themselves and the patients. In using a particular vocabulary to describe pain, they are thus able to dull the emotional impact of various situations. The violent turmoil of emotions is tamed and translated into a small number of set phrases. Black humour is the most well known characteristic of the special codes created in the hospital’s isolated world. «Off you go, young man! We’re going for a run in the Bois de Boulogne,» the nurse says to an invalid whom she just put jogging pans on.The sick are perfectly «non-productive»: they do not participate in the reproduction of the system but depend on it.

In the hospital, pain is not exceptional anymore as it was at home. Differences between individuals are levelled. A new hierarchy appears, within which the relation between passive bodies and active bodies is more radical. Focusing on body postures emphasises the gap between those sharing the hospital space. The slow motions of old people are opposed to the conspicuous dynamism of the nurses. Ancient sluggish bodies are moved, carried, washed, dealt with through numerous caring gestures. Limbs that cease to function seem to be cut off from the body. Thus one man literally asks for his legs to be removed «since they don’t work anymore.»

This breach in the integrity of the individual is outlined by close shots that isolate parts of the body, and by the fact that sound usually comes in from out of the shot. Some of the patients fight to assert their independence. One woman fiercely refuses to wash. She resists the doctor trying to explain the requirements of hospital hygiene. Her behaviour makes sense only to her: it is the only way she can feel she still has a choice over what happens to her body. Raymond withdraws to an inner world. He creates stories about objects he sees in his room, confusing past and present, dreams and reality.