Journey to a Land Otherwise Known

Laura Huertas Millán
2011-03-05

5
22 min

In a film, meeting a strange tribe often starts with the plunging view from a building necessary to the journey. The architecture of Jean-Pierre Secq dubbed the noise of the waves washes over us in this way. However, to open it, the construction was massive and still, unfolding the three concrete wings of this equatorial greenhouse in Lille. This essay on the conquest of America assumes its own contradiction, underlined by a montage of texts by colonisers: Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Hans Staden, Jean de Léry, Charles de la Condamine and the use of costumes and masks inspired by Brazilian modernism. The discovery of a new world conducted in slow motion listening to the minutes of an unlikely trial of the invaders. The most restrained of movements, surplus, to make the most of rediscovering the New World. Gilles Grand, FID Marseille catalogue, 2012.