︎





Model of the storyboard Jamais Toujours, 1965



Jamais Toujours, Never Always.
Why this title?
Because this story has a beginning but no end.
A beginning?
The story has to begin.
No end, because the author wants it to “always” be –
a film that you do not see come to an end.


Generic of Jamais Toujours, 1965











The story is simple and realistic – a man and a woman. During the credits we see an amateur 16mm film, endearing in its clumsiness.
The image shakes, and we hear an engine.
The last thing we see: the head of a girl in green.
Everything was black and white, cheerful and wonderful, and then came the colour. But the colour disappeared.
The film, still shot in colour scope,
only shows black and white images – real blacks and real whites.
The countryside hasn’t changed,
only the season.
A man is walking alone. Then the man throws his aeroplane, possibly a Stampe, directly at the much-loved Angers.
As the camera dives towards the city, it transforms,
and becomes a graphic design
in the form of a dream. Here begins the cartoon,
a veritable Larivière universe.


Entity Never, 1965


  
                                                   The ice cream cone, ask the usher, 1965





We lose ourselves in our delirium and the abundance of some of the images, the almost austere starkness of others. There are tragic moments, and comedy.
A vague, soft outline drags along the ground, expanding as it drips but progressing nonetheless: it is all that remains of the man who killed himself.
He continues to live in small pieces. His will wanted his destruction, but the mechanism still works. The rhythm of the images becomes lost, the sets are grandiose in the fashion
of Walt Disney, while the poor amoeba lives its psychodrama. It becomes a penguin (…), flower, butterfly, monster, little dot.
It comes together in a vague structure to create a form that comes to life : the face of the lost woman.
    










With Larivière, we always go from dream to reality, as if there were only a thin barrier between the two that we can step through without noticing. The woman lives happily in her romantic castle among the white fabrics and fairy tale towers. We must also mention (...) a small golf ball,
a round ball bearing the word : “never”. A small sphere travelling through space to the mythical city, fighting against omnipresent matter, flying to infinity.
An immortal bullet containing the remains of a man who wanted to die.


The bullet in the eye, Never Always, 1965










A ball, a city, a slightly awkward Superman, with his astronaut costume the colour of an English rose and his huge eyes, in which new visions dance, worried, sadistic or erotic – how can that shape a film? We cannot explain the magic of Larivière’s images. It is not something that should be explained.
One thing must be said, however : almost the entire film is made from just six photos of the inside of a television. Wires, tubes, endless cogs, in which we lose ourselves like in the head of a woman, like in our own feelings.


Isaure De Saint Pierre
Article for Zoom N°13, 1972




The Flying City, Jamais Toujours, 1965                  

Surface space-time, canvases resulting from the Jamais Toujours research, 1965

The city of the eight towers seen from the sky, Jamais Toujours, 1965              








Marey’s birds, Jamais Toujours, 1965


Jamais Toujours heroine, 1965




Appearance of a character from Edua Erame
crossing a map of Jamais Toujours, 1965


The bursting of mechanical feeling, Jamais Toujours, 1965 

Displacement curve of the bale Jamais, Jamais Toujours, 1965   

The box, Jamais Toujours, 1965





Art Toys Jamais Toujours special edition made for Art Toy for Paris Tout P'Tits Sale at Christies 2008. 
102 characters have been entrusted to creators, ink drawing on plastic figurine, 2008



The Usher’s Cry




A pink box contains a giant chocolate ice-cream containing a flip-book showing a close-up portrait with fluctuating lights.

A light meter reads the different shades of grey in this series of photos and transforms them into sounds. It is the movement of light on the face and the changing shades that allow the unit to create the sound: The Usher’s Cry.

Wooden Eskimo Pie icecream containing a flip-book

Wooden box covered with pink velvet.
Contains: a wooden eskimo pie icecream, a flip-book, a QR code giving access to the sound




︎ All rights reserved © Jean Larivière, 2022