Jean-François Guiton
«Gust of Wind»

For all its physicality, «Coup de vent,» succeeds in reducing Don Quixote's heroic joust with the sails of a windmill to an almost abstract, high-speed pattern of stick-strokes. Together with the dynamics of the movement and the editing, inserts showing rotating windmill sails give the tape its formal rhythm and framework, its balance between structured form and narrative elements. The piece was completed in 1990, and represents the culmination of many years' concentrated examination, through the video medium, of formal, linear processes. Jean-Francois Guiton also made a «Coup de vent» video installation that features slender white model windmills.

Rudolf Frieling