Louise Hervé and Chloé Maillet - Spectacles without Objects / A Recess and a Reconstruction

Te Whare Hēra Wellington International Artist Residency presented an exclusive screening of Spectacles without Objects (2016) and A Recess and a Reconstruction (2011) by Louise Hervé and Chloé Maillet.

Spectacles Without Objects (2016) locates performance art precedents in historic utopian social experiments, considering a ban on theatre in England 1642 to revolutionary celebrations staged by students of Jacques Louis David in Paris 1791, and the followers of Saint-Simon who live “the life of tomorrow” in 1830 Paris.

A Recess and a Reconstruction (2011) is a short documentary style film. The central theme of the film mediates on the imaginary potential of what lies ‘beneath’. While two tour guides marvel at a collection in a museum basement, an archaeologist pontificates on an entire civilization as he records the archaeological findings at the excavation site; and a young woman entombed in the underground recesses of a castle muses on her surroundings while contemplating the spaces between refuge and entrapment.