This is our final post about our residency at the beautiful Chateau de Sacy in France, which culminated with an exhibition at the Chateau for the month of September.
Back at the beginning of September, we installed the films in the barn of the Chateau, setting up a projector and sound system that was quite frankly fit for Wembley. With the dwarfs in place around the gardens and the clues and beautiful catalogue to hand, we were ready to open the gates for the private view.
There was a great turn out. The champagne bar went down well, though that could have been the dashing French bar man rather than the Le Clerc ‘buy one get one free’ champers. This did at least draw people up to the barn to view the films, where they seemed to linger for quite a while. We were really chuffed with how the films looked in the barn, it is an incredible setting, and the sound was phenomenal. The buzzing bees were particularly disturbing.
The dwarf trail had people wandering all over the garden, and we ended up having drinks on the terrace in front of the Chateau. A lovely afternoon.
Hermine translated the dwarf poetry to French so the local primary school children could do the dwarf trail, though we are not sure if they may have been too young to have their Disney dreams dismantled.
Looking back at the residency, we can see that this was a completely different way of working for us, producing work in a very short but intense period of time. However, there was room to experiment with new ways of working. We originally began doing the kind of stuff we are familiar with (interventionist, working with people) and ended up doing something out of our usual remit in making a film. Being at the Chateau was like being in a different world and gave us space to look back at our own lives and see them anew. And the result we think is one of the best pieces of work we have ever done.
When we went back to the Chateau at the beginning of October to deinstall, Hermine told us that the local Monsieur Mayor had thought she had a very bad wasp nest in the barn. No, she had told him, it’s just artists.
You can view the films on our website www.henrybragg.com
Apply for the residency yourself, applications currently open www.chateaudesacy.com We can’t recommend it highly enough.
