[…] On achève bien les discos* refers to Sydney Pollack’s film and to the dance marathons organised in the United States of America during the Great Depression: a very lucrative activity for the organisers, based on the voyeurism of some and the distress of others. As a symbol of the industrialisation of partying and the embodiment of Western beliefs and rituals, are discotheques not the last temples of Homo sapiens on the verge of extinction, or even destruction?

We roamed northern Italy and travelled several thousand kilometres to explore twenty or so emblematic nightclubs, all abandoned and with insane architecture and decor. On achève bien les discos revisits the archives of these places of celebration, reunion, and encounter, in suburban and rural areas […].

Built in the 1980s, the exhibition space has all the features of a discotheque. The artist takes over the building and skilfully deploys a range of techniques borrowed from the logic of performances. Through make-believe and tricks, he unabashedly creates a series of lo-fi optical illusions and defies pretences. The artist’s previous exhibitions were certainly a preamble to this one.


[…] Through an immersive scenography, On achève bien les discos offers a body of fixed or animated artworks, in two or three dimensions. Produced from old and new technologies, relics, and pastiches, they sow the seeds of confusion between archives and fictions. On achève bien les discos retranscribes the history and memories of abandoned Italian discotheques before plunging the public into the fluorescent and ghostly atmosphere of the famous and mythical dancefloor of Ultimo Impero. The exhibition is like an ecstatic journey punctuated by the music, bodies, and voices of those who inhabit it. Finally, On achève bien les discos outlines the duo’s initial dramaturgical intentions and sets the scene for their future video-opera, the writing of which will be nourished by a sustained and carefully thought-out programme.

Extracts from the text by Aurélie Faure.

* They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, inspired by Horace McCoy’s eponimous novel published in 1946.