Jean-Claude Mocik

Jean-Claude Mocik, was born on February 9, 1958, in Livry Gargan.

He is a filmmaker, video director, a director and teacher.

He realized fictions : Piste (1980), Moco Fictions(2007), documentaries : Théatre, Ecole Créativité (1982) and Looking For Beethoven ( 2012 ), experimental films : Paris Figure Simple ( 1986 ) and Nyc Nac Solo (1989 ) and videos : Correspondance avec Jean-Luc Godard (1985) and Laos Noblabla (2011).

At the same time, he developed visual prototypes such as Switcher Video Band.

Then he became assistant-director of Jean-Paul Jaud : SOS Charlot (1983), La Marseillaise (1989).

After studies of cinema and broadcasting in Paris VIII University, Jean-Claude Mocik worked with Pierre Jolivet : Strictement personnel (1985), Le complexe du kangourou (1986) and Jean-Pierre Mocky : Le Pactole (1985), La machine à découdre (1986).

From 1985, he is particularly drawn to new technologies.

He joined the Ars Technica Association connected to the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie uniting philosophers, artists, scientists such as Piotr Kowalski, Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond, Claude Faure, Jean-Max Albert, Sara Holt, Piero Gilardi, reflecting on the relationship between art and new technologies.

In 1989, Dominique Noguez recommended him for the 1st Biennial of Contemporary Art of Barcelona.

He showed a video installation in 12 TV monitors arranged in pyramid.

In the 90s, he was considered one of the precursors of HDTV beside Jean-Christophe Averty, David Niles, Zbigniew Rybczynski, Jacques Barsac, Pierre Trividic, Hervé Nisic.

He produced and realized experimental programs such as Dix-neuvième for Canal+.

In 1991, uniting his activities of R&D in audiovisual media conception, he created jcMCK, his own production company.

In 1992, the Centre national d’art et de culture Georges-Pompidou showed his experimental movies and videos at the Cinéma du Musée curated by Jean-Michel Bouhours.

Beside Catherine Desrosiers, Catherine Beuve-Mery and Maurice Séveno, Jean-Claude Mocik participated in the CICV of Belfort Montbéliard, with the conception of an interactive TV program.

In December, 1993, at the request of the 35mm laboratory Les 3 Lumières, he inaugurated Switcher Vidéo Band, an experimental multicameras captation in Le Palace, Paris.

In 1994, he left one of the main cooperatives of experimental films in Paris, Light Cône, and made the decision to broadcast his experimental movies and video tapes exclusively thru his personal workshop.

These projects, initiated in January 1994, continue today.

Once a month in his workshop, projections that are held.

His experimentations delve into his personal archives of films and videos, stored over time, in order to compose visual and sound arrangements specific to each session.

The result is a kind of palimpsest in permanent mutation.

The projection itself becomes form.

Recommended by Olivier Bontemps and Christophe Valdejo, two art directors of Gédéon and founders of the agency View, the Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani offered him, in 1995, the management of the department Cinéma-Vidéo of Fabrica, the Research center on the Communication of Benetton, based near Venice.

In November, 1996, Fabrice Michel and Alain Josseau invited him to Toulouse to conceive and present a video installation entitled Video Solo in reference to his movie Nyc Nac Solo, shot in 1989 in New-York.

L’Atelier de Recherche d’Arte regularly broadcasts his films and vidéos.

As a TV director, Jean-Claude Mocik collaborated on numerous programs broadcast on diverse TV channels: Paristroïka, produced and broadcast by MCM Euromusique, Tout Paris for Paris-Première, L’Atelier 246 for FR3, Court Circuit, produced by MK2 broadcast by Arte.

He created concepts of documentary series of which Le Travail en questions, a collection of 10 × 52 min animated by Ariel Wizman and Francis von Litsenborgh, were broadcast on La Cinquième.

Since 2006, he is in charge of an educational department of Conception, Writing and Directing within the Pole of Education and Research of INA.

In 2007, he wrote the screenplay and directed Moco Fictions a visual film essay completely shot with a robot.

In 2013, he filmed in Vienna, Austria, Looking For Beethoven, a documentary film on Belcea Quartet for TV Mezzo and for a German music channel Unitel Classica.

In February, 2014, at the request of Paul Ouazan, he contributed to a project entitled Le marcheur, broadcast on Arte Creative.

Very early, Jean-Caude Mocik identifies himself in filmmaking as a "rhythmmaker" director.

If scenes and sequences are generally imposed by the scenario and its narration, rhythmmaker or metric cinema assumes to be indifferent to subject and story.

Images and sounds are detached from any production of meaning ; they are exclusively dedicated to a rhythmic layout where visual and sound elements are used as material for durations, rates, frequencies, times and cycles.

A process is established with the aim of collecting visual dynamics in a structured composition.

From shooting to editing, all cinematographic resources are considered a priori sources of rhythm: axes and camera movements, lenses, editing, are thus subject to constraint through a rhythmic system (similar to music, metric or not), which offers unusual compositions on screen.

Framings or pans, which are usually led by the movement of a character, are pre-set here: regardless of whether this character stays in the frame or not.

His work as a rhythmmaker artist implies progressing over very long periods, like daily shots with a film camera for over 30 years, (Séries circadienne ) or using 2 video cameras, shooting every two weeks at noon sharp, in the imposed itinerary at the gates of Paris, (Midi pile ).