The VideoFest asked Le Tacon questions concerning his relationship with the video medium. The following text was his answer: I began creating images through an involvement with filmmaking (Cochon qui s'en dedit, The pig that cancelled, 1980). At that time the project was a Super 8mm film. What appealed to me then was the mechanical side to producing Super 8 films (the financial and material aspects were unimportant) which immediately inspired me to experiment and investigate with different forms of expression. Cochon qui s'en dedit is, above all, a documentary film, but by using what was at my disposal it became more than a documentary film. It assumed a hybrid- form in which hallucinatory pictures removed the viewer to a zone of fiction. Later my decision to work with video was connected to the fact that it offered me far more possibilities with regard to experimentation, and that it allowed me to change genres at will. My relationship to video is aimed at developing something new, outside of the stereotypical genres. /I dance video like Waterproof is not simply a dance video, but also a fictional work filled with as much fear as sensuality. Likewise the portrait An Abad Bourdelles, An Emsaver is more than a simple portrait. It also becomes a work about seascapes. I'm sometimes asked what all of this has to do with video as a medium. But video is precisely the medium which offers the chance to experiment with every possibility of either a thematic or expressive nature. And I like working with Paluche video-camera (extremely light and handy camera - ed.). Held in the hollow of your hand it's like having eyes in your fingertips. It lets me perceive reality either subjectively or unconventionally. Its wide angle disfigures perspectives. The camera almost touches closeness and lets me record erratic or fluid, as well as tender or aggressive movements. And so the same moment I begin filming I can already incorporate my emotions in the pictures. I use every kind of camera and every kind of trolley for moving them. The objective is to capture people and things from a different standpoint, and perhaps from an inhuman standpoint. In connection with the camera movements in Waterproof you could talk about a kind of "fish camera"; or "bird camera" with respect to the 8mm video shots in Terra Incognita where the camera was attached to a flying kite. The same pictures and effects are possible using a film camera. Abel Gance proved that many years ago with his Napoleon film. Still, video equipment is easier to handle, more manipulative, better suited to the conditions of experimentation and, in many ways, less expensive. The possibility of immediately seeing and studying a shot leads to more intensified process of visual searching. Finally, and thanks to the possibility of working with lengths of magnetic tape, it's possible to produce excellent shots of the sea and deserted places. In L'arpen- teur de mers (The measurer of the sea), for instance, with a stationary shot I could film the sea rushing in and out again, from sunrise to sundown. This was not merely a technical study, but an exercise in awareness, in perceiving cosmic movements during the act of filming. While cutting a film I'm naturally interested in the countless sources that greatly influenced the images in the first place. After the production everything becomes arranged, or better, rearranged. The light is refined, the camera's speed recalculated, the background established and the color values perfectly defined. The filming process produces no more than the raw stuff which is then broken down and through the postproduction procedures rebuilt to a well-defined compositional whole. This situation or process, this holding off the finished product with decisions up to the last, coincides with my nature. It's not necessary to hold to an unvarying editing-programme but rather to constantly improvise, following the dictates of the experimental. I few thoughts on the electronic picture-definition: Here we find ourselves in a difficult but interesting situation. What we called "video technology" a few years ago has not only become a fashionable trend but even a banality. Music-clips, trailers and video-presentations of television programmes are staples of this video technology. The determined usage of numerical units and the new mind-boggling effects prove to the eyes of the viewer that, technically speaking, video is non plus ultra. It promotes the effervescent, the comfortable and the playful sides of ideas, which is why the media and its constituents insist on such pictures. They become household appliances, used for projects related to "making videos" and which use such images as their models. Recently in France a new terminology has emerged: One no longer refers to video but rather to "new technics". "Making videos" doesn't interest me much. The most advanced video equipment has to be incorporated and "transposed" in a way that makes it serve the creative endeavor. That, in particular, is what I want to say, make felt, and during my search for new forms with the help of this equipment, make happen. To put it more clearly: I try to flush out the form that I have to use, and to pass that on to this machine through what I say and feel. That, too, is why I prefer video equipment that offers me the most technical possibilities, and less so those machines with standard performing capacity. My intention always comes first: that's to say my theme, anchored in my emotions, in history and in my stories.