Two Years at Sea

In the snow or by the embers – whatever the season, Ben Rivers films Jake in black and white with his 16 mm camera, deep in the forest. The questioning about his choice of life style gives way to the attentive observation of each of his movements, of his concentration on a task. In an immense piled-up jumble that wrecks any notion of what a house should be, and where inside and outside have switched appearances, organizing objects is the principal chore. Basic needs (like boiling water in extreme cold) are less easily satisfied than elsewhere. The extent of Jake’s ingenuity seems commensurate with the deliciously undemanding nature of the life he has built for himself. For example, his experimental devices for siestas: a caravan hoisted into the treetops, a raft that allows his gaze to float in the skies. The imaginary tribe of Slow Action (Réel 2011) is not too far away: in both cases, worlds are constructed – the one in order to reinvent the future through the filter of a past enriched by scholarly books, the other to find a good place from which to dream.