HOLLYWATER
Réalisation Camille Goujon 2011
Dessin animé
Hollywater fait référence à Hollywood, temple de l’artifice, qui fait oublier à ses visiteurs que cette ville, installée en plein désert, souffre du manque d’eau. Holy water, signifie également : eau bénite, or si l’eau est toujours sacrée à Los Angeles son Dieu est désormais celui de l’économie de l’eau. Hollywater est également une interprétation de cette autre capitale de la société du spectacle où l’argent coule à flot, où l’eau vaut de l’or : Las Vegas. Cette usine d'embouteillage est une version contemporaine du porte-bouteille de Duchamp fantasmé en machine érotique.
The title “Hollywater”, refers to Hollywood, the temple of Artifice, which makes its visitors oblivious to the fact that the city, set in the middle of a desert, suffers from a lack of water. Hollywater also evokes “holy water”. But if water is sacred in Los Angeles, the city’s god is less the god of water than the god of the water industry.
In the last few years, my artistic work has been centered on the water industry and urban planing in the city of Los Angeles. This megalopolis diverts the water it needs, from once fertile regions, by means of large aqueducts that run over hundreds of miles. Los Angeles is nothing but a giant bottling- and bottleneck-factory.
The Hollywater installation is also an image of another capital of the society of spectacle, where money flows freely and water is worth its weight in gold: Las Vegas. While the local inhabitants line up in the “Waterstores” to fill their bottles with drinking water, the tourists line up in casinos to fill their pockets with liquid funds. On the other side of the mirror, the water level of Lake Mead continues to drop drastically.
Such observations inspired me to create a bottling factory transformed into a casino. This cartoon symbolises the ever-repeated circuit of a drop of water, as described by geographer Elisée Reclus in Histoire d’un Ruisseau: the bottles fall from the clouds, hurtle down the mountains, fall into a dam, flow into the city where they go round and round on the game cloths of the “CASI NO WATER”, before being greedily gulped down by a man and a woman. The woman gives birth to small bottles, while fizzy water comes out of the man’s bottle-bottom. The couple is a symbol for the sex industry: the “PIPE SHOW”. This factory is a modern version of Duchamp’s bottle-holder, fantasized into an erotic machine.
On the crest of one of the moutains of this temple of Waste, the HOLLYWATER sign stands out.