Paris-Gonesse Project n.06 Pauline Pastry

A graduate of the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Pauline Pastry explores the industrial world and the changing condition of workers through a practice that combines photography, video, sculpture and publishing. From dance to the perception of gesture through video, her research is an interpretation of the body at work.

During her residency at Bernard Controls she invited the operators to shift their gaze onto their professional gestures and the everyday materials of the factory. Photographic compositions were developed collectively to stage technical objects with a purely aesthetic aim.

She also approached the work gestures of some operators through the lens of choreography. Each participant in the filmed performance 6DDL rethought their work movements and reinterpreted them outside the workshop, in front of the CCTV cameras. And when she films the painters in their area, she reveals the rhythm of a danced sequence.

These moments of creation, shared between the operators and the artist, bear witness to a time of latency and to a few “degrees of freedom” drawn from working hours, to tune body and gaze to a poetic intention.