The inhabitants of HERMES renounce the reasons for moving and acting that they generally know, in order to surrender to the opportunities for theft. They are provoked by the solicitations of the environment. Constant currents structure and limit movement. Pockets allow for hiding and escaping. Fragments attract the inhabitant, symbolising the richness of resistant objects, to be kept or appropriated.

FRAGMENT

small piece or PART

especially when BROKEN

from something WHOLE

maintains DOUBT about original / whole

dependant from an UNDEFINED rest

literary works CONSTRUCTED as fragmentary pieces

as REMEMBERED memories or thoughts

POCKET

a SMALL BAG sewn INTO or ON clothing

so as to form PART OF IT

used for CARRYING small articles

ISOLATED area

place to HIDE or to ESCAPE

that also represents RISK

because of its SIZE and SITUATION

place of ACCUMULATION

Une ou plusieurs personnes se livrant à la dérive renoncent, pour une durée plus ou moins longue, aux raisons de se déplacer et d’agir qu’elles se connaissent généralement, aux relations, aux travaux et aux loisirs qui leur sont propres, pour se laisser aller aux sollicitations du terrain et des rencontres qui y correspondent. La part de l’aléatoire est ici moins déterminante qu’on ne croit : du point de vue de la dérive, il existe un relief psychogéographique des villes, avec des courants constants, des points fixes, et des tourbillons qui rendent l’accès ou la sortie de certaines zones fort malaisés.

Dérive (n.)

One of the basic situationist practices is the dérive (“drifting”), a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances. Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll.

Hermes is an Olympian deity in ancient Greek religion and mythology. Hermes is considered the herald of the gods. He is also considered the protector of human heralds, travellers, thieves, merchants, and orators. He is able to move quickly and freely between the worlds of the mortal and the divine, aided by his winged sandals. Hermes plays the role of the psychopomp or "soul guide" — a conductor of souls into the afterlife. In myth, Hermes functioned as the emissary and messenger of the gods, and was often presented as the son of Zeus and Maia, the Pleiad. He is regarded as "the divine trickster", for which Homer offers the most popular account in his Hymn to Hermes.

Tradition is somehow related to myth. [...] they help to explain the society. [...] The hypotheses discover the facts and not vice versa; and if you look at things in this way - this is the reasoning - the role of traditions in society is roughly equivalent to that of hypotheses in science.

For Bresson, then, acting is, like mood music and expressive camera work, just one more way of deforming reality or inventing that has to be avoided.