International Institute for Important Items
Louise Hervé & Clovis Maillet
/ Das Depot (Prämise einer Mediathek)
Installation and performance, group show The Third place, curated by Anne Faucheret, Grazer Kunstverein Austria, April-June 2009
«While there are many films in the history of cinema dealing with ancient Greece, or ancient Egypt for instance, there are very few of them treating of final bronze age in central Europe. As a matter of fact one could consider that Conan the Barbarian, directed by Simon Milius in 1982, is one of these few films focusing on these prehistorical times. Indeed, the plot narrates the adventures of a young Cimmerian called Conan whose father has the secret of making iron swords. But it is obvious that the director, Simon Milius was not very concerned with historical reconstruction. The main aim of the film was rather to underline the enormous strength of the main character, who was trained the hard way by all the years he spent toiling as a slave chained to a wheel. Conan was impersonated by the most famous bodybuilder of that time: Arnold Schwarzenegger, born in 1947 in Thal, Austria, in the vicinity of Graz.»
«In the multi-part installation The Hoard (premise for a media library), authority figures, events, and objects are taken up and staged in contexts that are on occasion bizarre. A plan chest turns into a treasure chamber. The lift in Graz’s Schlossberg transfigures into an element of science fiction.» (Anne Faucheret)
The installation was composed of a set of complementary elements. The prominent feature was a bronze age archeological hoard, lent by the Schloss Eggenberg museum of Graz (the archeological collection was then unavailable to the public). This collection was organised inside the drawers of a metallic piece of furniture.
Further, we had designed a desk where one could consult the documents of a small media library set on a shelf. This media library was dedicated to the relationship between archaeology and science-fiction.
A plastic-coated-card placed on the desk and a one-time-performance linked all these elements.
Installation et performance, dans le cadre de l’exposition Le troisième lieu – Der dritte Ort, commissariat : Anne Faucheret, Grazer Kunstverein, Autriche, avril-juin 2009
L’installation était composée d’un ensemble d’élements disparates mais complémentaires, dont le principal était un trésor archéologique de l’âge du bronze prêté par le Schloss Eggenberg, un musée de Graz (ses collections n’étaient alors pas ouvertes au public). Nous avions conçu notre propre typologie parmi ces objets et les avions répartis dans les tiroirs fermés d’un meuble metallique.
Plus loin, un bureau de visionnage était installé à proximité d’une petite bibliothèque comprenant des documents consultables à la demande et dédiée aux rapports entre archéologie et science-fiction.
Une fiche plastifiée posée sur le bureau reliait tous ces éléments et une performance présentée une seule fois proposait un parcours dans cette prémisse de médiathèque.