The screen presents a lone and inactive character. Pensive or sleepy, he remains indefinitely immobile for as long as the spectator remains inactive. If the spectator intervenes (with a “click”), the character performs an action. He gets up, telephones, smokes a cigarette, etc. As soon as he has completed his task, the character falls back into his contemplative state, until the spectator intervenes again.
This project was created by means of a procedure that consists of causing a moment of a video sequence to be extended for as long as the spectator chooses not to intervene. Foliage thus remains indefinitely animated, a fountain spurts or a sleeping man slumbers. The image never freezes. Life seems to continue its course. The spectator’s intervention (the “click”) is comparable to that of a computer game player guiding his or her character. The essential difference is that this is not a reality that has been reconstituted in two or three dimensions, but a reality that has been captured photographically. Spectators thus have the impression of intervening in this reality, of waking the sleeper or disrupting a period of inactivity.
This film is freely based on the character created by Ivan Gontcharov. Spectators are confronted with an individual whose natural inclination is to do nothing. Their only choice is to respect the character’s tranquillity, or not. Unaware of the action that will be set in motion, the spectator’s impulse is not the “do this! do that!” of a video game, but simply a “do something!”. The character then acts, as though driven by his guilt or by a sense of “why not?” but invariably, after a few moments, he returns to a contemplative or drowsy state, as though calmed by an inner motivation of the “what’s the use?” variety. The spectator thus comes to ask themselves in turn “what’s the use of clicking?”, “what’s the use of taking action?”, “what is the point of interactivity?”.

Translated by Anna Knight