Quatre filins, frein, moteur, couverture de survie, 48 volts
Vivien Roubaud (born in 1986 in Vouziers) lives and works in Brussels. A graduate of the Villa Arson and winner of the 2014 Révélations Emerige Prize, he diverts objects and technical materials to reveal their hidden potential. His assemblage work brings poetry, social critique, and physical phenomena into dialogue through fragile, unstable, and often spectacular installations.
Four cables, brake, motor, survival blanket, 48 volts
For this installation, Vivien Roubaud continues a long-term research by exploring new materials: survival blankets. Suspended by four motorized cables equipped with freewheels, they rise and fold according to random pulls. The characteristic reflections of this technical material radiate under the dome’s light, sculpting air and space while revealing the void and the layers of air that sustain them. The crumpling of membranes only a few microns thick evolves in the space, while the unsynchronized clicking of the motors adds a sound dimension—both mechanical and unpredictable. In this way, the work makes intangible forces visible and audible: flows, densities, and energies circulating through space. Constantly reconfiguring its environment, the sail structure exceeds its own limits. Through this mechanical device, this “moving sculpture” renders the invisible perceptible, showing how each micro-moment and gesture can transform space in a sensitive way.
This work is a production of KIKK with the support of the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (digital arts).
