« Prisoner's cinema is the phenomenon of a "light show" of various colors that appear out of the darkness. The light has a form, but those that have seen it find it difficult to describe. Sometimes, the cinema lights resolve into human or other figures. »

Prisoner’s Cinema is an immersive installation and set design. It was created at Le Sprinkler, a studio for artists and craftspeople, in September 2024 as part of an exhibition supported by the DRAC Île-de-France and the Seine-Saint-Denis departmental council. It was later presented a second time in a "non-gallery" space at 8 rue d’Enghien in Paris, in January 2025.

This installation draws inspiration from liminal spaces—those transitional places that seem suspended outside of time. Inspired by the non-places described by Marc Augé, it stages environments that are both anonymous and eerily familiar—empty spaces where human absence becomes almost tangible. The arrangement of volumes and perspectives creates a feeling of uncanny strangeness, where the viewer wavers between recognition and discomfort, like confronting an inaccessible memory. The project explores anxiety and introspection through the staging of these ambiguous architectures—halfway between shelter and abandonment. These sets evoke a paradoxical refuge: a place that protects as much as it confines, that soothes as much as it disorients. In an era marked by successive crises, the resurgence of liminal spaces expresses a need to flee reality by retreating into places where time and landmarks dissolve, opening onto another form of existence.

The installation relies on environmental storytelling mechanics—a method inspired by video games where space itself becomes a vector for narrative. As in Bioshock or other immersive works, every element of the set suggests a fragmented story that the visitor intuitively pieces together. Traces of habitation, displaced objects, flickering lights—all become silent clues that weave a quiet dramaturgy, where absence becomes narrative and the invisible takes form.

The experience is strictly individual: the visitor enters the installation alone, passing through a closet that they must close behind them. This passage, both mundane and symbolic, marks the transition between reality and the fictional space of the set. Once inside, they find themselves in an environment that seems to exist outside of time—like a scene frozen mid-transformation. This setup intensifies the intimacy and isolation of the experience: the absence of other human presences heightens the visitor’s relationship with the space, its sounds, its lights, and volumes. The installation becomes a place of mental projection, where each visitor reconstructs their own narrative through fragments of a world oscillating between the eerily familiar and the profoundly unknown.

For several nights, I've had the same dream. I see myself transported into a strange room, bathed in warm light. Each night, my gaze randomly settles on a new area of the room, and over time, I can almost map the space in my mind. One thought comforts me at first, then terrifies me: I am not the first to visit this Point Nemo of dream-oceans.

The first night, I ignored the room, thinking I was in just another dream. But after all these nights, I am convinced that this place truly exists... somewhere. At first, I thought I was inside some kind of cell, due to the single, sealed exit I glimpsed from the corner of my eye. But on the third night, I was able to clearly see the door, barricaded with nailed planks—and I understood that the entity living here had locked itself in from the inside. As if it were vital to never step outside… or to keep something from entering. I so desperately want to understand what that entity seeks, dwelling in this space beyond time.
Each night, I try to identify a new part of the room. Here, a modest, rigid cot. There, an abandoned camp stove. The sense that I’m intruding on the den of an eremite—one who has found the final place of his contemplation—grows stronger each time. And always... that unreal light bathing the room through the window.

Opposite the bed is a crumpled sheet of metal with iridescent reflections. I spend several nights staring into what appears to be an abstraction. Then one evening, I realize that dead trees are emerging from that coppery soil. I am actually gazing, from above, upon a forgotten land—like a god contemplating the world he has just destroyed with a breath.

My theory of the traveler is confirmed when I discover his bag, hanging on the wall. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s covered in artifacts, likely collected during his journeys through the corridors of time. What forbidden worlds has he crossed? I want to carry that bag too—and begin my own odyssey. But something unspeakable calls me deeper into the room.

I find my answer behind the only window that looks outside. Through the yellowed glass, I glimpse doors connecting a mere fragment of what seems to be an immense labyrinth. Perhaps it is linked to the strange sculptures that wait in the room with me… Did the entity bring them back from the labyrinth? Or perhaps these fragments of cathedrals are its own creations… Whatever their nature, the hermit seems obsessed with observing them. And for a moment, I sit down in the chair facing the window.

As I sit, a flood of emotions rushes through me. Gazing into the labyrinth beyond, my mind is overwhelmed by a thousand thoughts—some of which aren’t even mine. It’s an unbroken stream of ideas and feelings. I feel as though I’ve entered a near-cosmic channel that now urges me to build my own cathedral, my own fragment. And for a brief moment, I understand that in this exact instant, I am the traveler.

The dreams have stopped these past few nights. And yet, a part of me has remained in that place. I keep thinking of the window that looks out upon the Great Labyrinth, and the secrets it holds within… And on my table sits a block of stone that I’ve begun to sculpt.

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