ENTRE VILLE - JR CARPENTER (2)
Entre Ville is a complex exploration of a slice of life, one that is specific and very much real. By subjecting ourselves to the experience of the work, we become a part of this life. The work employs many techniques to immerse users in the mind and memory of the narrator. Entre Ville was created as a way for others to experience JR Carpenter’s memories of her hometown in a uniquely structured and deeply personal way. Because of this, there is no doubt that Entre Ville encourages empathy and identification with a unique perspective.
One of the most obvious examples. We see moving, living, breathing clips of the neighborhood and its smallest intricacies from the point of view of a handheld camera; we are not simply being shown these back alleyways, but we are experiencing them as firsthand memories. We are affected not only by visual stimulation but also by the sounds accompanying each place--each scrap of a memory. By clicking on the No Dogs sign, we see the dog as he is described in the poem, his tags clinking together as he runs down the alleyway.
In other windows we hear sounds from the street, like cars, birds, sirens, construction, babies crying, and people talking, though we never see any of the things that produce the sounds. There is a general sense of hopelessness and abandonment. In one video, the streets are covered in what can only be described as junk, toasters, lamps, and toys, pieces of lives left behind and forgotten. By documenting this, Carpenter captures the desolation of a neighborhood that once was lively and bustling. In the poem “Saint Urbain Street Heat”, Carpenter describes her neighbors as she remembers them: the vulgar Greek woman, the French trumpeter, the sex-crazed couple upstairs. There is a large sense of fragmentation, of contradictions between the past and present. These small pieces of experience come together in a patchworked frame of consciousness that is both nostalgic for the past and separated from it. We experience mere moments, which are weaved together and layered by text and mechanics to create an overarching experience of life.