The Flow

 

The Flow 

An exploration of the immediate data of our consciousness.

The-Flow

Dreams. Memories. Cities.

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This project is an attempt to represent time as it is lived, not as it is measured. The Flow seeks to give form to the stream of consciousness across a full day, where past and future remain constantly intertwined. Artificial intelligence acts as a catalyst, enabling the fusion of images from multiple places and temporalities.

To make this inner experience of time visible, The Flow unfolds through two complementary approaches: chronotopes — sequences that crystallize the memory embedded in a place — and open montages that follow the mental rhythm of a drifting consciousness.

Chronotopes.

Unity of memory and duration.

In The Flow, certain sequences focus on specific places. But these places are not filmed as backdrops or landmarks. They are spaces charged with duration — carriers of invisible temporal density, of memory that doesn’t appear immediately, but slowly emerges through the image.

Each fragment becomes a point of condensation for lived time, a meeting between a physical space and a latent memory. What the viewer perceives is not a static scene, but a stratification of invisible temporalities — a space where the past lingers in the present, where the atmosphere of a moment resonates with other moments already lived, imagined, or remembered.

This approach draws directly from Bergson’s conception of memory. For Bergson, pure memory is not stored physically in the brain; it exists in a virtual, non-localized, immaterial space.  


It contains the entirety of our lived experience — not as frozen archives, but as states available for re-actualization at any moment, often triggered by a light, a gesture, a passing sensation.

That is what these chronotopes offer in The Flow.
They do not document a place; they awaken a potential memory.
They give the viewer the feeling of a memory surfacing, even if it cannot be clearly identified.
A street seen through glass, an empty room, a corner café — and suddenly, time seems to thicken, something insists, lingers, waits.

These sequences are images of duration.
They do not aim to inform, but to make the viewer feel — not what has happened, but what is still happening, quietly, inside the flow of inner time.

Montages.

Stream of consciousness.

If the chronotopes in The Flow reveal durations embedded in a place, montage explores their movement.
It does not follow a narrative. It does not construct a logical progression. It mirrors the discontinuous rhythm of thought — its returns, its shifts, its overlaps.

Here, montage is not a mere tool of construction; it is an act of consciousness. It reflects what Bergson described as the very nature of lived time — a fluid, qualitative time, where memories, perceptions, and anticipations intertwine. Our thoughts do not unfold in a linear order: they branch off, circle back, unfold according to their own often unexpected logic.

Montage thus becomes a form of consciousness in itself — a way of navigating durations, articulating what is latent with what is actual, what has been perceived with what is being reconfigured.

It does not simply link images; it organizes a flow of perception, like the mind does — without fixed rules, yet with an intimate coherence.

In The Flow, montage is more than a sequence of images — it is thought itself in motion. Not a representation of consciousness, but its sensory manifestation.

It reveals the mind in the act of becoming: fragmentary, fluid, unpredictable, always in a state of recomposition.

By working with memory, perception, and lived time, The Flow offers a possible form for remembering — an attempt to give shape to inner time, that silent current moving through us at every moment.

Contact benjaminbardou@gmail.com

Contact benjaminbardou@gmail.com