.Maar. • 2021
CGI Video 04'24'' + Prints
".Maar.’ is Léa Porré’s latest video project that follows her ongoing exploration of her country’s medieval history as well as world-wide mythology.
Based on her research on volcanism in France as well as local tales and folklore, .Maar. narrates a fictional travel of a geologist encountering Lac Pavin — a truly mysterious and unique lake — for the first time.
Located in France, in the volcanic region of Auvergne, Lac Pavin is on top of a supposedly dormant volcano, whose latest eruption dates back 6000 years. Since then, many other sightings have been reported for centuries and became part of local folklore. Becoming a place where myth and reality collide, its very name draws its roots from latin ‘pavens’, a dreading lake ‘where the Devil resides’.
This geological site becomes a set for Porré’s video, in which the narrator’s encounter with the lake gives way to something much more mysterious, an intimate one-to-one connection with the lake as we learn that it contains a form of life reminiscent of the times of primordial life — an impossible rendez-vous with our own genesis.
Porré’s .Maar. offers a captivating transhistorical disjointed narrative, rendering excavation and ritual, legend and fantasy as one."
