In the summer 2013, a kestrel was spotted by the inhabitants of Altinayva, a Turkish village in the province of Elazig, while it was hovering. Having caught it, the villagers discovered on its leg a ring on which they could read the following: 24311 TEL AVIVUNIA ISRAEL.

Although bird-ringing rules are not uniform throughout the world, it is quite unusual for the place of origin to be so precisely mentioned. In no time suspected of being a spy working for Mossad, the Israeli secret service, the animal was handed over to the local authorities who carried out various examinations, and X-rayed the bird, before admitting that it was not carrying any information devices. They duly let it go.

Based as much on the animal’s movements as on the origin of the ring, that suspicion was aired in a tense regional context where any event, no matter how insignificant, can be interpreted in a meaningful if not paranoid way.

Perhaps the birds’ freedom of movement, established as it was in a territory encompassing several countries and cocking a snook at borders helped to make it suspect.

Based on this news item, Maxime Bondu creates what we might call fiction, or rather a possible historical prospect. Taking the kestrel’s ring number as a reference, he speculates about the contingent espionage potential by way of engraved aluminum plaques as if ready for use for ringing, and whose numbers extend the source reference. And paranoia works its way into the installation: seen from above, isn’t the oddly insignificant Turkish village a theatre of future military operations? And what is the falcon perched on the branch, apparently indifferent, waiting for? What it is watching?

As often in Maxime Bondu’s work, the installation functions in a network of interferences like an extension of reality, an almost logical prolongation, but one that diverges slightly, creating a place where, in the discrepancy, fiction makes it possible to look at reality with a keener eye.

View of the exhibition darker and darker grows the landscape (la possibilité d’une île), Le Commun, BAC, Genève. Cur. Bénédicte Le Pimpec & Isaline Vuille.