Marcel, Sea and World
Although, in our ordinary representations, Marcel Dinahet’s main subject, the sea, may frequently be connected to other places, it is only rarely a matter, with this artist, of great adventures and extraordinary journeys. What is more, when Marcel films in faraway lands, his camera’s eye seems no more particularly surprised by what it records than when he is filming on the shores of the Channel.
If there is any surprise, this lies not so much in the observation of anything strange, or foreign, as in that of a repetition, both accompanied and contradicted by time and action.
What Marcel describes is tangible and material: it is the mixture of sky and land, the encounter of materials, air, water, it is waves on sand and suns on water.
Here is the subject within the subject: areas of meetings, vague, moving, changing, at times terrestrial, at others maritime, what we might call a foreshore boundary as opposed to wall boundaries.
Nothing is still with Marcel.
Marcel is a tide.
Marcel beneath the waves
It was in the early 1990s that Marcel Dinahet undertook a decisive move in his work, by literally deciding to sink it, in other words, by sinking several of his sculptures in different places on the Breton coast. In the weeks following those operations, he dived regularly to see what was happening to the works. The sculptures were gradually colonized and transformed by things living, moving and sculpting on the sea bed: shells, the erosion of currents, etc.
In archaeology, the word “find” is used to describe the haphazard discovery of an object under the sea (or land), and the person making this discovery is called the author.3 Here, Marcel is an inventor twice over: he is the author of the object and the author of its discovery.
A few months later, at an exhibition where he was invited to show this undersea work, Marcel returned to film his sculptures, and was then much taken by the potential of that medium in those surroundings.
He duly stopped putting objects in water, but went on filming underwater. And so it was that he moved from the sculptor’s hand to the video-maker’s eye, with both activities sharing the study of movement, in his work.

Marcel made most of his submarine videos in the 1990s.
Then he started to go back up to the surface.

• Marcel between the waves

Marcel is an amphibian.4
So are some of his exhibitions. In 1992, in Dinard, he showed a series of photographs bolted to the concrete of the saltwater pool at the Plage de l’Ecluse. These photos were submerged at high tide; so it was necessary to dive to see them during that tidal variation. One thinks of the works devised by James Turrell for Le Confort Moderne, that same year: what was involved, for the visitor, was diving without bottles into the blue water of a swimming pool, and then, a few yards further on, discovering the blue of the sky through an opening in the roof. Turrell’s work was completely immersive and experimental, while Dinahet’s played more on the constant movement of appearance and disappearance. But there is no doubt that he, too, was in tune with the movements of sky and cosmos, and at the very least of the moon.

In the many videos of floating landscapes5 which ensued, and which the artist developed for twenty years, between 1995 and 2015, the camera was to be found between air and water. There we find the undulation of the dividing line. There is the rolling waterline, and the moving point of view. And there is still the ceaseless motion.

    For a long time, Marcel come to the water surface.
                Then he kept on going back up to the surface.

• Marcel beside the waves

When Marcel Dinahet is not filming in the water, he is filming on the shore, be it from the land (on foot) or from the sea or a river (in a boat). Whatever the viewpoint and the camera’s support, these are almost always shaken.
Here again, we can fully gauge the significance of movement, ebb and flow. Of the inclusion within a certain history of performance, too.

Marcel often goes round in circles.
As if trying to catch up with perpetual motion, and grab it.
So what he sets in motion and captures are gestures and images which have a radical simplicity and an uncompromising rendering. The sound recording, live, it too shaken, and often windy, adds to the impression of unstable fleetingness, not to say giddiness and confusion.

On other occasions, Marcel pursues things, and when he does his camera is an eye on the run.
In a series of recent videos (2018-2019), in which he catches reflections of the sun and films night, he reaches the limits of abstraction.
One thinks of experimental cinema, and certain films made by Robert Breer and Stan Brakhage.6 One thinks of the glimpses of beauty7 that Jonas Mekas liked to capture with his camera. But what Marcel is trying to catch is probably matter in motion rather than volatile beauty. Because, for him, who remains a sculptor, everything is matter making it possible to grasp matter: water, air, waves, pebbles, even sounds, usually left as is in the editing.

For Marcel, art is movement, trajectory, drawing, action. In his regard, might we not talk of ‘action filming’, the way, for other visual artists, we talk of ‘action painting’? The recent drawings (2018-2019) on view in the show at the FRAC underpin this parallel.

    Like waves, Marcel dances, goes away, comes back, goes away again, and moves faster.

• Marcel on the waves

Marcel has two boats, both dinghies, a Zodiac and a Marauder.

The Zodiac, which is easy to fold away, is an inflatable dinghy with an outboard motor which fits nicely into the boot of a small car. Its small size means that it can go everywhere. It is an ideal boat for coastal explorations.8

With his Zodiac, Marcel keeps a close eye on the shores of Brittany.

“The Marauder is a centerboard sailboat with a shaped plastic hull, rigged as a sloop. Three-fifths of its length is deck, and it has a deckhouse with two bunks. It is a fast boat, which sails well into the wind; it is unsinkable, and its cockpit is self-bailing. A sporting crew, not afraid of living rough, can sail it anywhere and take it on wonderful roamings on lakes and the sea.”9
When Marcel’s Marauder is not sailing, it rests up on two supports in the mud, not far from the old La Landriais dry dock, at Le Mihinic.
Marcel has painted the hull blue.
Marcel has dyed the jib blue.
Marcel has dyed the mainsail blue.
Marcel’s Marauder moves well.
It is stable with a following wind.
It rides readily upwind.
It sails at 3,4,5,6 knots!

Marcel’s Marauder is one of his works.
It is a floating sculpture.

Marcel has been aboard lots of boats. Usually to film on them.
There have been: a Breton cutter with a pistachio-coloured sail in Saint-Brieuc bay; a boat plying between the islands off Vladivostok, in far-eastern Russia; several ferry boats going to England and Ireland; a fishing boat, the Louis Gaëtan, off Sète in the Mediterranean; and another fishing boat cum art school, the B.O.A.T., along the shores of Brittany again; a boat on a tributary of the Amazon, in Brazil… and others still.

Marcel is the passenger and ferryman on the Thames and the Exe,
on the Rio Tapajós and the Amazon,
the Pregolia and the
Volga,
the sea of Japan and the Mediterranean,
the river Rance, the Channel, and the
Atlantic.
(There is just the size of the vessel, the river bed, and the waves which change).

    Marcel is a wave.