Hypnotic and lunar, constructed of light and shadow, rollin’ only illuminates if more is switched off.

Created in 2010 in Toulouse on the facade of a hydroelectric plant, the artwork was reactivated in Amiens in 2013 and, in 2019, on the Dunkirk Urban Community building, during the first edition of the Art and Industry Triennial.
Reminiscent of a clock without hands during the day, rollin’ only begins its luminous, energetic cycles at nightfall. The artwork then transposes the animated wheel of the digital world (indicating latency or an ongoing task), and its rotating glows evoke cycles of production and consumption, creation and destruction, appearance and disappearance. It thus represents the transitions from one world to another.

The average speed of its recursive trances is correlated, with each new installation of the artwork, to the level of greenhouse gases (GHGs) present in the atmosphere (in this case, an increase of 10% compared to its creation date in 2010). These successive revolutions alternate at random cadences, constantly shifting at the edge of perception, and are only made apparent through this reinterpreted kinetic energy, combined with a reduction in surrounding urban lighting.
The artwork thus articulates, as well, an invisible dynamic of subtraction. This luminous and energetic overcompensation is materialized for this edition by the switching off (or dimming to 25% intensity) of more than 1,500 public lighting points in collaboration with the City and the Port of Dunkirk.

Located on the Nicodeme company site, rollin’ is part of the port’s industrial landscape, dedicated to flows and production. It faces the vast expanse of Malo-les-Bains beach, a space devoted to leisure and relaxation. This choice paradoxically aims to make it visible, through optical impregnation, in a miniaturized scale and in a condensed, precarious position in the face of the monumental. A retinal trap of restrained ostentation, it operates quietly, marking an elastic time; the time that irresistibly draws us closer to debacle, or to a resurgence.