스킵네비게이션

Born 1974 in Lyon, France

Lives in Paris

Nicolas BOONE, Vessels and buses are passing by, 2020, Video, color, sound, 26min, TOURNAGE3000 PRODUCTION 

As a film director, Nicolas BOONE creates his works in a constant flux between directing and video recording. The results of this approach are manifold. He has made series (BUP, 2007/2008) and a number of middle-length and short films which are sometimes presented together as a whole program (Les Dépossédés, 2012). BOONE’s films take us around the world, from the poor neighborhood Las Cruces in Bogatá, Columbia (LAS CRUCES, 2018) to deserted villages in sub-Saharan Senegal (PSALM, 2015). His directorial style lets us follow the footsteps of local inhabitants and travelers. By creating this intimate relation he lets us experience the brutality, dreams, and joy that define everyday life in the environments he presents to us.

BOONE often chooses to visit forgotten or neglected areas, such as the once-fashionable Hillbrow neighborhood in Johannesburg, which used to be an Apartheid-designated “whites only” area, but which is today densely populated and characterized by high crime rates (HILLBROW, 2014). Further he rarely gives the viewer specific information such as names of the characters or locations, and he uses this abstraction as a way of pointing to the general issues, for example poverty and violence. Finally, many of BOONE’s works share an interest in social interrelations and the idea of community. This is most clear in the experimental film ETAGE 39, in which BOONE investigates spatial experience in collaboration with eleven people in an enclosed room padded with a green screen. Subsequently, BOONE replaced the green screen for marvelous panoramas from all over the world that alter the viewer's experience of the emptiness that the participants endured. Alongside his work as a director, BOONE creates performances, such as NOTHING HAPPENING, a three-hour live performance made while on residency in Vancouver. NOTHING HAPPENING was performed at LIQUIDATION, a retrospective exhibition of his video works in 2011.