Art and matter | Tandem | Films

There are gestures that do not need words.

About

Synopsis

There are gestures that do not need words. In Eric Faure's workshop, digital tools work alongside traditional techniques to create a sculpture, authentic metal lace. Precision, concentration, a steady hand, Eric Faure is an artisan who sublimates matter by his high technicality and inventiveness.

The artist

Eric Faure was born in 1967.

Master craftsman, he lives and works in Voiron (38).

More info

Director and cinematographer	Olivier Charpin
Editing	Etienne Semelet
Music composer	Kevin Jaumotte
Duration	06:18

Chronicle

The beauty of the craftsman’s method.

"Sometimes even better than with a human being, I manage to converse with metal."
Éric Faure.

In a world where the will of tyrants converts metal to lethal weaponry, what remains essential is this: that overnight, in a workshop, sparks should fly from the hand of a man versed in finesse.

The director Olivier Charpin, acting as both master and servant of the ceremony about to take place in the intimacy of the night, offers us a privileged, frank insight into Éric Faure’s truth.

The sharp angle of a computer dominates the centre of the screen. Then comes the false banality of keys clattering on a keyboard, short and sonorous, and a blue hue lights up the craftsman’s concentrated eyes. Credits and music! Ankle outstretched on an iron point, a ballerina, incandescent, ignites a shower of stars. The screens provide a mise-en-abîme where numbers, escaped from the chalkboard of childhood, rediscover their poetry, and then a hammer knocks on the door. In the hand of the honest worker, all tools reveal their nobility.

We look on as infinite lightness converses with the hardness of metal. A language is brought forth from all this secret apparatus, imbuing the steel sheet with tenderness, cutting it out in the shape of a flower, whispering that it possesses, deep within, the grace of a snowflake. A snowflake that will grow bolder until it reveals the inaccessible star of its celestial origins. Between the silent craftsman, the material and the subtlety of his sky, an agreement takes shape.

And so the poem finds its voice in the squeaks and shudders, the blends and secret alloys, as if they were words. Illuminated by the delicate, incisive score of Kevin Jaumotte, a musician-magician capable of turning all sounds into notes, water, iron and fire come together to express, like lacework made of light, the sublimated form of the imagined object: powerful, fragile, soft.

Without attempting to make it human, the man has understood and respected the structure of metal. With the result that steel is no longer the flesh-tearing mercenary: it becomes once again the conductor of light, illuminating the thoughts of all men.

Viviane Montagnon, Writer

Viviane Montagnon was born in Lyon and lives in Bresse. She is a writer, an author of songs and theatre, an actor, and a singer. One of her latest works Le Panier de Lucette (Lucette’s Basket) was published in 2014 by Editions Aréopage.