Manuela Pacella

Bertille Bak. The Fairy Tale of the Real: La fiaba del reale Manuela Pacella

Bak never starts from a definite project a priori; at times they are casual meetings, everyday observations that lead her to approach groups of people whose own story is worth being told because oftentimes it remains invisible and unheeded or is in decline. Her videos do not have the documentary style at all, but they are micro-narrations characterized by light tones and ironic twists, which highlight certain aspects of a given group, whose habits and rituals become aesthetic endeavours capable of reaffirming the present, of restoring the dignity of their story, of looking afresh at it and with less gloomy colours. A sort of creative re-processing of grief or a realisation of their own present through an aesthetic act.[Manuela Pacella] This essay (with text in English and an Italian translation) on Bertille Bak (Arras, 1983) covers a decade of the French artist's activity, from 2007 to 2017, identifying the key points, framing it in that historical-artistic context defined by Hal Foster as "artist as ethnographer" and comparing it with other artists on the international scene. Bertille Bak's works are the result of months of observation and coexistence with groups of individuals whose history is on the verge of extinction and who become co-producers of her films and many of her derivative objects. According to Manuela Pacella, collective participation - ranging from conception to acting, from scenography to sound - is the key point of Bertille Bak's methodology, to which is added the goal of creating a light and imaginary narrative, sometimes with ironic and burlesque tones. And it is precisely through the use of the fable and the accentuation of the artifact elements that Bak finds a poetic shortcut to tell the truth.