Louidgi Beltrame’s work is based on documenting modes of human organisation throughout the history of the 20th century. He travels to sites defined by a paradigmatic relation to modernity: Hiroshima, Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, Chandigarh, Tchernobyl or the mining colony of Gunkanjima, over the sea off Nagasaki. His films - based on the recording of reality and the constitution of an archive - appeal to fiction as a possible way to consider History.



Nakanoshima, le jardin au-dessus de la mer

2012
Film super-8 transféré en vidéo HD, 11 minutes.

The film presents the exploration by subjective camera of Nakanoshima, a tiny rocky isle off the coast of Nagasaki, where the subtropical vegetation covers the ruins of the landscaped park built in the 1960s, and the remains of an early 20th century Buddhist cemetery. This work refers to an older video (not on view in the show) titled Gunkanjima, and shot during the same journey to a nowadays deserted factory island, lying 500 yards from Nakanoshima.

The island of Nakanoshima is here regarded as the negative space of Gunkanjima. It was in fact its cemetery during the period when the coal mines were in operation on Gunkanjima. Its function as a cemetery was coupled with that of a recreational park for Gunkanjima’s inhabitants from the early 1960s to the mine’s closure in 1974. The highly mobile super-8 camera records the island’s topography and monuments. The sound track consists of a simple commentary by the artist, describing his progress on the island, and trying to establish a link between his discoveries (monuments, constructions, vegetation…) and his incomplete knowledge of its history, along with that of Gunkanjima.