FLASH FORWARD – Atelier de Création Radiophonique
2002

Produced and realized as part of a public commission by France Culture/Centre national des arts plastiques, Ministère de la culture et de la communication.
Broadcast during the Atelier de Création Radiophonique program on France Culture on Sunday, September 27, 2002 from 10:10 to 11:30 p.m.

The flash forward is a figure of speech in cinema and literature, which consists in breaking the temporal continuity of a story with a sudden “jump” into the future, before returning to the present time of the narrative. Boris Achour is accompanied in conversation by two guests: Éric Mangion (then director of FRAC Provences-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, art critic) and François Piron (then co-director of Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, editor of Trouble magazine, art critic, curator). Two strata of different nature and temporality blend together. On the one hand, a sound track, previously produced by Boris Achour, made up of extracts from radio broadcasts on the subject of time, past and future. In this first track, we find sound material other than interviews, i.e. song extracts, interweaving sounds, news bulletins, reports… These elements are arranged together by jumping back and forth, loops and superimpositions. The second track is a live discussion: Boris Achour talks to the two guests in Studio 119 at the Maison de la Radio, about the idea of the present. The show’s producer has at his disposal the recorded track and the live track, which he mixes and alternates as he pleases, without warning. Several temporalities intermingle, that of direct time and that of deferred time. But Flash Forward also conjures up two types of discourse: a discussion between friends, similar to those we have in convivial moments, where approximation, anecdote and one-upmanship reign; and a completely different type of discourse, that of specialists and professionals, efficient and controlled.