Patricia Dauder
Barcelona, Spain, 1973
Les Maliens (a film), 2007
16 mm super film. transferred to video
Colour, audio. 12’49”
Edition 1/5
Gift of the artist 2008

For a long time, Patricia Dauder used drawing as her primary medium. Drawing is the most intimate form of manual work for an artist, one that puts the process of its elaboration directly on display. In that sense, it is the most efficient means of communicating an idea. Her approach to filmmaking is somewhat similar: she explores what lies at the heart of the medium; on the one hand, time and length and, on the other, editing.

Shot in Mali, West Africa, Les Maliens (a Film) would seem to announce that Dauder’s work focuses primarily on the inhabitants of this country. Yet, there is almost no human presence in this film, which consists of a succession of long steady shots of urban and rural landscapes in different locations around the country. It depicts the landscape in an almost neutral fashion; it features the African city with its remains of colonial architecture, its streets, the surrounding desert, … Lacking any depiction of concrete events, or time references, it reflects a distant, almost scientific, topographic approach to the subject matter.