Stations is a fiction made up of thirteen chapters which represent stages in the exploration of a child's imagination. An omniscient stranger gives a watch to a child. the hands turn backwards, stigamtizing the young boy's daydreams through time. The work is based around the family home. Inside a Norman Rockwell-style representation - the father in profile reading the newspaper, the mother seen from behind in the kitchen - the child, absent, looks out of the window. Robert Wilson uses inserts, each illustrating the themes of the videogram (Fire, Metal, Wind, Snow, Water, etc.). The skylight which the child glances at represents a node between his internal life and his perception of the outside world. To quote Paul Virilio, it represents the "third window": an opening not on external space, but on an imaginary, optico-electronic world. Under the child's impassive gaze, a whole world enters the family home. Warriors invade the kitchen, cables entwine the father and mother, time continues to run backwards on the boy's wrist, a bridge collapses, soldiers parade, enormous bees fly through space, a pyramid is built, children shout, etc. The parents sometimes look at their son to observe his silence and his imperturbable air. The storm is in his skull. The unknown, as in Lang's Mabuse, appears in control of the monitors which show all the scenes, modifying their course and scrambling all memory of them. The thirteen levels of Stations are like the rumbles of a brain withdrawn into itself or in the middle of paradoxical sleep. The child subjects his parents to the worst catastrophes that his imagination can invent, operations authorized by the Image Manipulator who allows the boy to give free rein to his imagination without any backlash from his conscience. The organization of the editing of this videogram ranges between personal memory (the family scene burning, the kitchen filling with dust: satisfaction of the child's imagination) and collective memory (old news reels). The piano music is expressive, as in silent films. Stations closes with a happy ending, in which the family rejoice and the manipulator is swept away by the flood.

Dominique Garrigues