Archives

Louis Henderson

Logical Revolts
09.28.12 - 10.21.12
Exhibition — les Abattoirs, Musée – Frac Occitanie Toulouse

Louis Henderson
Logical Revolts, film (2012)
Courtesy of the artist and Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains
Photo : Nicolas Brasseur, Le Printemps de Septembre 2012

Born in Norwich in 1983, he lives and works between London and Lille (France).

 

Louis Henderson is twenty-eight years old and a student at Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains. At the end of his first year there he showed Logical Revolts, a medium-length film about Egypt from 1952 to 2012, about revolts against colonialism and today’s revolts. It speaks to us of the vastness of the world, of the seventeen million inhabitants of Cairo, of holes in history, of the changing geography of places. About the deep disarray of inadequate memory when it lacks both knowledge and the determination to go and research it locally. It takes us on a journey through times and places, an archaeological, historical and poetical journey. Poetry, which plays an essential part in this film, makes it possible to give shape to thought, underscore weakness, and stay with us long after the hero of the film (who is none other than Louis Henderson, and who has nothing heroic about him) has disappeared in the desert, heading towards Palestine, and long after the narrator’s voice has fallen silent. The inflections of the narrator’s voice – the narrator being Henderson’s alter ego – resonate in our ears: a perfect voice, at once inaccessible and present, mature and sensuous, elegant and rhythmic. A voice that will stay with us throughout the film, from the image of the double-barrelled cannon at the entrance to the Imperial War Museum in London, which opens the story, all the way to the paranoiac panic that sizes and overcomes Henderson himself as he is caught in his own trap. Indeed, we never see this Henderson, but we sense that he is an outsider wherever he goes. For example, on Tahrir Square, where he feels he is being given hostile looks by the rebelling Egyptians occupying the square.

In partnership with Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains