As in his other works, Marcel Bataillard continues to explore the relationship between text and image and to move back and forth between theory and practice. Thus, the film Le sens de la marche (Catwalk the line) literally shows the artist’s gait. 

The video shows a succession of the artist’s movements – of whom only the legs are visible, filmed from a first-person perspective and in portrait format – with no geographical or temporal clues other than what is framed. It is therefore only by observing the landscapes traversed and the clothing worn that the viewer can form an idea of the season and the location where these images were recorded. Filmed on a mobile phone between 2013 and 2015, these tracking shots are the result of Marcel Bataillard’s journeys between home and studio and the ‘traces’ of his photographic activity; for the series Au passage and Je suis une légende in particular, all the shots he takes are done on a day-to-day basis without any location scouting or preparatory work.

The hypnotic, haunting soundtrack, composed of a mix of voices and music sourced from the internet, revisits the theme of the artist at work. Marcel Bataillard has selected excerpts from online video tutorials offering advice to aspiring models on how to walk the catwalk(1) properly, or demonstrating methods for budding musicians to learn how to play Johnny Cash’s I Walk the Line(2) correctly – a song designed for the open road. 

When Johnny Cash wanders the catwalk… or how to tread the path to success.

(1) The catwalk is the English term for the runway used in fashion shows, which models walk from one end to the other before turning around and returning to the backstage area.

(2) I Walk the Line, a lament by a wayward man who finds the straight and narrow through love, is one of the most famous songs written by Johnny Cash.