The two French artists, Cyprien Gaillard and Marine Hugonnier, both work – in very different ways – with the landscape as a reflection on the social and political history.

Gaillard deals with a form of revisited-land-art, or as he puts it “land-art as a form of vandalism”. His latest piece “Crazy Horse” is the story about the construction of a monumental, national history sculpture – namely the American Indians’ attempt to beat the Americans on their “own turf” by building a monument bigger than Mount Rushmore. The project started in 1948 in The Black Hills in South Dakota, and is still in progress. The prognosis for completion is about 8 years and in that case, it will be the largest monument in the world – bigger than the pyramids of Gizeh!

Marine Hugonnier, like Gaillard, journeys into the history of the landscape when she in “Travelling Amazonia” travels the Brazilian trans-Amazonia motorway, stretching through the jungle from east to west. The motorway was build during the dictatorship in the 70’ies, but it was never finished. From there, Huggonier builds a dolly with tracks, picking up the trail of the ultimate colonial project to repeat the insanity with this ideological “travelling shot”.

In her other movie on the programme, “The Last Hour”, Huggonier lifts us up from the jungle up and into the skies when we, in a not too distant future, are freighted over the iconic Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps in a hot air balloon. The tourist attraction is soon closed to the public, and the movie plays with the idea that the world map could once more contain unexplored areas.

Cyprien Gaillard, France
Crazy Horse, 2009, 28 min.

Marine Huggonier, France
The Last Tour, 2004, 14 min.
Travelling Amazonia, 2006, 23 min.