Le Doigt de l'Ange (2023)

A digit dances across the tablet or smartphone screen. Images flicker by. Sometimes, the finger pauses, a smile kindles in the eyes. A hint of recent past surfaces. Odd, this way of evoking and erasing. There's extreme care in the principle, a surface incantation, a strange caress, with just one finger. We don't dig up the past, we don't consult it, we tame it. It seems the smartphone or tablet has altered the nature of memory. It's not like a madeleine, the scene isn't miraculous, it's been arranged, desired. But it's not like a photo we hold, orient, paste. Life is there, but on the other side of the wall, summoned, invited, made to vanish by the finger.