Mutant Stage 7: "Cloud Chasers"

Lafayette Anticipation – Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette launches "Cloud Chasers", the 7th "Mutant Stage" episode. This film by (LA)HORDE (Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer & Arthur Harel) was released on Monday November 7 and is now on view at lafayetteanticipation.com

CLOUD CHASERS:

Throughout this exploration of smoke sculptures created by cloud chasers, (LA)HORDE seeks to give shape to a latent moment within the Foundation’s transition. The smoke occupies the space with a volatile and magical aesthetic, exploring its potential to welcome artworks and artistic projects in development. It bears witness to a space in mutation, whose shapes are not yet defined. The cloud chaser’s posture, a new generation smoker, embodies an active expectation which gives rise to an artistic exploration and emphasizes that the Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette already exists, and that pieces are created within it. This film wishes to be a surprising and unexpected response to Lafayette Anticipation’s commission, offering a radical gesture stemming from a different kind of dance and questioning of spaces for creation. 

THE MUTANT STAGE PROJECT

"Mutant Stage" is a series of choreographed short films initiated by Amélie Couillard and Dimitri Chamblas and produced by Lafayette Anticipation – Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette during the renovation of its building between 2015 to 2017. Six films have already been produced; they were directed respectively by Wendy Morgan, Elen Usdin, Benjamin Millepied and Olga Dukhovnaya & Konstantin Lipatov, Louise Hémon, Frédéric Lebain and Grégoire Pédron. Volmir Cordeiro, Pauline Simon, Jung-Ae Kim, Amalia Alba, Florence Casanave, Lisa Miramond, Annabelle Pirlot, Olga Dukhovnaya, Benjamin Millepied, Alix Eynaudi, Matthieu Barbin, Manuela Carneiro and Keem-S Martinez have already danced in the Fondation’s future site. 

Throughout the renovation conducted by OMA and Rem Koolhaas, and until the public opening of the Fondation in Autumn 2017, the building at 9 rue du Plâtre is the object of an investigation into its own mutation as the evolving architecture is measured over the months by in situ encounters of directors and performers. Initiated by the Fondation with the curators Amélie Couillaud and Dimitri Chamblas, each shoot is the opportunity for a different encounter that sets bodies and matter into motion, animating the changing building. "Mutant Stage" stems from Lafayette Anticipation's pre-launch programme, open to emerging performance art and contemporary dance scenes. 

Thus "Mutant Stage" pulses both within the building, and beyond, into the centre of the city. The title of the project is inspired by a Rem Koolhaas expression that encapsulates the essence of Lafayette Anticipation’s building performative architecture and the commitment of the institution to the hybridisation of art and life. Each film in the series, shaped by the visual vocabulary of dance, cinema and architecture, is a singular object, existing in multiple fields at once. In this way, 9 rue du Plâtre remains a space for invitation and experimentation, a building in motion.