\u201cThe man who meditates not, lives in blindness; the man who
meditates, lives in darkness.\u201d<\/p>\u2014 Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare^{1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 1 <\/a> - VICTOR HUGO, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, TRANS. MELVILLE B. ANDERSON (CHICAGO: A. C. MCCLURG AND COMPANY, 1887), 175.<\/span><\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I like R\u00e9miniscence<\/em>. Or, rather, I should say that I like the work now<\/em>. Yet on the evening when I saw it for the first time, hanging near the bar at Montreal\u2019s PHI centre, I remember finding it disturbing. Too dark. This perspective above the clouds seemed ominous. There was something unsettling in the imposing thick clouds, in the reflections of the room captured in the image, something that was beyond my comprehension, something troubling. I chatted away with my friends about a screening that we had seen earlier, but my gaze was constantly drawn back to this darkness, to these clouds, to our reflections in the glass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps it was a case of pareidolia, perhaps hidden in the image was a disquieting figure that escaped my consciousness? Or perhaps this image was watching me, and, feeling observed, I couldn\u2019t help but raise my eyes? But I don\u2019t think so. Something else was at work. Something that, like all unsettling dramas, was at once insignificant and cosmic. The human psyche is strange: it only takes one seemingly incongruous element for everything to suddenly become uncertain, fragile, contingent\u200a\u2014\u200afor the turmoil in the image to become the turmoil in our perception and, by contagion, in our whole being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A broad array of art\u200a\u2014\u200aand contemporary art is no exception\u200a\u2014\u200aaims at immersing the viewer in another universe, another world that stretches beyond what can be seen in the frame. The real world is thus coupled with another space, one that resides beyond the image. And so we dream of simply looking at a representation, mentally exploring the new space that is portrayed, that is evoked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tourism of the imaginary has been developing for centuries. We enjoy immersing ourselves in images to escape our current condition: cinema, an extension of painting and literature, confers body and movement to these new environments, these new latitudes; video games offer us immense, immersive, interactive universes to explore.^{2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 2 <\/a> - In this regard, see my research: Le monde sans fin des jeux vid\u00e9o<\/em> (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2009).<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, what these worlds have in common is that they all make sense; they all bear some resemblance to our own. It is only thus that we can project ourselves into them, find a space to land and move around. The characters inhabiting these worlds share our hopes and fears; it is only thus that we can identify with them. All imagination is, as a matter of principle, humanistic; that is, on a human scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLittle by little, my retina did what was necessary, setting in motion the obscure mechanical movements of the eye; my pupil dilated, my eye became accustomed, so to speak, and this darkness that I was observing began to grow pale. I distinguished what? Impossible to say. It was indistinct, transient, imperceptible to the eye, as it were. If nothingness had a form, it would be this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Victor Hugo, Le promontoire du <\/em>songe^{3<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 3 <\/a> - Victor Hugo, Le Promontoire du songe<\/em> (Paris: \u00c9ditons Gallimard, 2012), 20 (our translation).<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Hugo is describing here is his visit to the Paris Observatory, upon the invitation of his astronomer friend Dominique Fran\u00e7ois d\u2019Arago. What he observed, what remained so vividly in his memory that he would recall it thirty years later in Le promontoire du songe<\/em>, is the moon. The moon seen through Arago\u2019s telescope. Arago, however, had a surprise for Hugo: before showing him the moon illuminated by the sun, the moon as we know it, he revealed it to him in the shadow of Earth, a dark body against the absolute darkness of the universe. It was this primal darkness that disoriented Hugo and upset the fragile balance between reality and dream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nicolas Baier seems to take up the role of Arago and offer us his telescope, a lens through which we can observe neither the familiar nor the strange, but something that challenges the very structure that determines these categories and their opposition. Baier proposes images that are monumental not in terms of their size, of course, but in terms of the vertigo that they engender. We feel strangely fragile when we look at them; they confront us with a world\u200a\u2014\u200aour own\u200a\u2014\u200afrom which we seem to be absent, a world suddenly unfamiliar and whose disconcerting scale, the infinite nature of its rhythms, and the ineluctability of its forces we can finally measure\u2009.\u2009.\u2009. rupture of scale, turmoil, detachment<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Confronted with these key words\u200a\u2014\u200ainfinite, excessive scale, vertigo\u200a\u2014\u200athe philosopher or art historian will return to his notes on Kant and the sublime, then dip his quill in his inkwell, satisfied. The art historian is au fait with the sublime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n