Autoportrait,
La longue marche, 2017

“The Long Walk is my self-portrait.
When I designed this work, the tune
of ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’, a song sung
by Allied soldiers during the First World War,
came to my mind through my mother’s voice. She used to sing it, having heard it on the roads of France…”




The Long Walk is a video composed
of a succession of frames – the screen looks like a long timeline. The artist identifies
with a toy robot from the years 1990, whose head is replaced with a photograph
of Larivière, who we see traversing different ages across his life. The robot’s walk
is followed by the appearance of lines
and dots, and this Morse code message
is an enigmatic subtitle. Only the artist reveals to us that it is ‘It’s a Long Way
to Tipperary’.

The work references the ultimate question
of time. The human body, subject to aging,
is confronted with the mechanical immortality of a machine.