Continuing a series of pieces created in emblematic places of modern architecture in the United States, Californian artists Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly return to Paris with the Modern Living project as part of the Festival d'Automne in Paris, investing two iconic venues designed by Le Corbusier, they explore sensuality nestled in the shadow of modernism.
Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye and the Appartement-atelier: two living spaces that are as many sites where new ways of living are being invented, at the same time as an architectural language. After probing the couple's metamorphoses in Reusable Parts/Endless Love and Timelining, presented at the 2017 Paris Autumn Festival, intimate life, daily rhythms and domestic space are at the heart of Modern Living, Clockwork and Schindler/Glass - two performances and a film respectively.
For Gerard & Kelly, the Apartment-workshop apartment of the Molitor building becomes a time machine, through the play of bodies and light. At Villa Savoye, it is the adventure between Le Corbusier and the American dancer Josephine Baker that inspires the choreography, infusing a playful sensuality and subversive force into modernist perfection. The glass and concrete box then becomes a boat floating on the horizon - which suspends, the time of travel, standards and borders.
Finally, the film Schindler/Glass combines in a single work the performances at Philip Johnson's Glass House and R.M. Schindler's house in the United States, whose choreography follows the carefully desynchronized rhythms of the inhabitants of a house.
Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly (United States) are recipients of the Performing Arts Committees of the Cité internationale des arts.
The entire Modern Living project is presented with the support of the Hermès Corporate Foundation as part of its New Settings programme.