Nan Goldin with Soundwalk Collective and Hala Wardé ‘The Women’s March, 1789’
Photography by
NAN GOLDIN
Sound Composition & Installation by
SOUNDWALK COLLECTIVE
Architecture & Scenography by
HALA WARDE
with Isabelle Adjani, Elodie Bouchez, Laetitia Casta, Catherine Deneuve, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Nan Goldin, Isabelle Huppert, Isild Le Besco, Anna Mouglalis, Charlotte Rampling
This project afforded the opportunity to discover the dark, hidden side of Versailles, thanks to its vast and remarkable system of waterworks – an astonishing engineering feat of hard graft at the service of the sublime. A world within a world.
The actresses represent the ideal of womanhood defended by Olympe de Gouges in 1791; women who have taken a stance in life thanks to their work, their vision, their resilience. We imagined their voices as shadow voices wandering through this vast underground labyrinth. Voices that would have lived down there, hidden away. Voices that demanded to be heard. Soundwalk Collective dreamed up a sonic conversation with Nan Goldin’s photographs as a way of giving voice to these female shadows in the underground passages of history.
The world below ground inevitably hints at a marginal ‘underground’ existence where energy that is pure, that does not lie, seeks expression. An urgency that harbours an incorruptible truth, like that of the women who marched on Versailles for the world to recognise their existence.
Exhibition view “Visible / Invisible”, Château de Versailles, 2019, Courtesy of the artist Nan Goldin, Paris 2018/2019, in collaboration with Soundwalk Collective, Hala Wardé & HW Architecture, ©Tadzio
Sound composition and installation: Soundwalk Collective – Stephan Crasneanscki, Simone Merli – and their studio: Robert Henriques, Arnaud Marten, Nico Joly
Sound technology by L-Acoustics
SOUNDWALK COLLECTIVE