Maison Maison

In the location of an abandoned, soon-to-be demolished house, Augustin Rebetez and Noé Cauderay have made their charming and, at times, eerie stop-animation film, Maison (2012), from the opportunity of the debris and imagined phantasmic hauntings of the space. Using the most humble of materials – cardboard, paint, drawings, and the variety of objects and fixtures already there – the artists construct small cities, with houses and populations of inhabitants, spirits, and other curious characters. We can imagine the same fate befalling some of the more derelict spaces on Cockatoo Island, a fitting venue for watching this enchanting piece that clearly evidences the time and effort of its creation.

The house itself becomes a protagonist in this puppet-like architecture. Ever experimental, Maison is a constant cannibalisation of the house by the house, and by the props that Rebetez and Cauderay have found and made. Walls gobble themselves up, floors devour themselves, beds and their derelict linens and mattresses become animate and weirdly abject. A curious energy is produced in the frenzied ingestion of the house into itself, and in the multiplying of the puppet people into yet others.

This energy is emphasised by a soundtrack collaged from techno-sounds and synthetic music, combined with percussion and modified voices. Chatter and babble, sirens, radio static and flaccid drumming add a scratch-jazzy urgency to the scatology of the enterprise.

No clear narrative is sought or developed – all remains spontaneous, in flux and ephemeral. In spirit, Maison lives within the traditions of magic and surrealism, and could be seen to continue the inventions commenced by artists interested in art brut and those who attempted a kind of borrowed primitivism. Equally, Maison belongs to the legacy of the urban inhabitations and transformations of artists such as Gordon Matta-Clark, whose interest in entropy and architectural alchemy made use of that which was marked for demolition in order to memorialise the disappearing in their monumental, yet fleeting, works.

In Maison, the metaphor of breakdown, re-use and recycling of materials keeps the animation openly organic and makes a kind of ecological statement, linked, as was Matta-Clark’s, to the social concerns for those displaced and de-housed in an environment of commercial colonisation.

Rebetez has held numerous solo exhibitions, including ‘New works’, Swiss Cultural Centre, Paris (2013); ‘Ici vous allez trouver ce que nous cherchons’, Centre Dürrenmatt, Neuchâtel (2013); ‘Thank you to give me all these birds but I am not a sky’, Art and Design Gallery University, Hertfordshire (2013); ‘Hyper-spiritism’, Rencontres d’Arles, Arles (2011); and ‘Gueules de Bois’, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne (2009).

Cauderay studied at the Photography School of Vevey and has worked as an architectural photographer for several construction firms. Rebetez and Cauderay have been collaborating since 2009 and have exhibited work together at Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel (2013); ‘Les Urbaines’, Lausanne (2012); Musée jurassien des Arts, Moutier (2012); Artijuli Festival, Senja (2012); and Artsenal, Delémont (2010).
The house itself becomes a protagonist in this puppet-like architecture. Ever experimental, Maison is a constant cannibalisation of the house by the house, and by the props that Rebetez and Cauderay have found and made. Walls gobble themselves up, floors devour themselves, beds and their derelict linens and mattresses become animate and weirdly abject. A curious energy is produced in the frenzied ingestion of the house into itself, and in the multiplying of the puppet people into yet others.

This energy is emphasised by a soundtrack collaged from techno-sounds and synthetic music, combined with percussion and modified voices. Chatter and babble, sirens, radio static and flaccid drumming add a scratch-jazzy urgency to the scatology of the enterprise.

No clear narrative is sought or developed – all remains spontaneous, in flux and ephemeral. In spirit, Maison lives within the traditions of magic and surrealism, and could be seen to continue the inventions commenced by artists interested in art brut and those who attempted a kind of borrowed primitivism. Equally, Maison belongs to the legacy of the urban inhabitations and transformations of artists such as Gordon Matta-Clark, whose interest in entropy and architectural alchemy made use of that which was marked for demolition in order to memorialise the disappearing in their monumental, yet fleeting, works.

In Maison, the metaphor of breakdown, re-use and recycling of materials keeps the animation openly organic and makes a kind of ecological statement, linked, as was Matta-Clark’s, to the social concerns for those displaced and de-housed in an environment of commercial colonisation.
Rebetez has held numerous solo exhibitions, including ‘New works’, Swiss Cultural Centre, Paris (2013); ‘Ici vous allez trouver ce que nous cherchons’, Centre Dürrenmatt, Neuchâtel (2013); ‘Thank you to give me all these birds but I am not a sky’, Art and Design Gallery University, Hertfordshire (2013); ‘Hyper-spiritism’, Rencontres d’Arles, Arles (2011); and ‘Gueules de Bois’, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne (2009).

Cauderay studied at the Photography School of Vevey and has worked as an architectural photographer for several construction firms. Rebetez and Cauderay have been collaborating since 2009 and have exhibited work together at Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel (2013); ‘Les Urbaines’, Lausanne (2012); Musée jurassien des Arts, Moutier (2012); Artijuli Festival, Senja (2012); and Artsenal, Delémont (2010).

In the location of an abandoned, soon-to-be demolished house, Augustin Rebetez and Noé Cauderay have made their charming and, at times, eerie stop-animation film, Maison (2012), from the opportunity of the debris and imagined phantasmic hauntings of the space. Using the most humble of materials – cardboard, paint, drawings, and the variety of objects and fixtures already there – the artists construct small cities, with houses and populations of inhabitants, spirits, and other curious characters. We can imagine the same fate befalling some of the more derelict spaces on Cockatoo Island, a fitting venue for watching this enchanting piece that clearly evidences the time and effort of its creation.

The house itself becomes a protagonist in this puppet-like architecture. Ever experimental, Maison is a constant cannibalisation of the house by the house, and by the props that Rebetez and Cauderay have found and made. Walls gobble themselves up, floors devour themselves, beds and their derelict linens and mattresses become animate and weirdly abject. A curious energy is produced in the frenzied ingestion of the house into itself, and in the multiplying of the puppet people into yet others.

This energy is emphasised by a soundtrack collaged from techno-sounds and synthetic music, combined with percussion and modified voices. Chatter and babble, sirens, radio static and flaccid drumming add a scratch-jazzy urgency to the scatology of the enterprise.

No clear narrative is sought or developed – all remains spontaneous, in flux and ephemeral. In spirit, Maison lives within the traditions of magic and surrealism, and could be seen to continue the inventions commenced by artists interested in art brut and those who attempted a kind of borrowed primitivism. Equally, Maison belongs to the legacy of the urban inhabitations and transformations of artists such as Gordon Matta-Clark, whose interest in entropy and architectural alchemy made use of that which was marked for demolition in order to memorialise the disappearing in their monumental, yet fleeting, works.

In Maison, the metaphor of breakdown, re-use and recycling of materials keeps the animation openly organic and makes a kind of ecological statement, linked, as was Matta-Clark’s, to the social concerns for those displaced and de-housed in an environment of commercial colonisation.

Rebetez has held numerous solo exhibitions, including ‘New works’, Swiss Cultural Centre, Paris (2013); ‘Ici vous allez trouver ce que nous cherchons’, Centre Dürrenmatt, Neuchâtel (2013); ‘Thank you to give me all these birds but I am not a sky’, Art and Design Gallery University, Hertfordshire (2013); ‘Hyper-spiritism’, Rencontres d’Arles, Arles (2011); and ‘Gueules de Bois’, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne (2009).

Cauderay studied at the Photography School of Vevey and has worked as an architectural photographer for several construction firms. Rebetez and Cauderay have been collaborating since 2009 and have exhibited work together at Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel (2013); ‘Les Urbaines’, Lausanne (2012); Musée jurassien des Arts, Moutier (2012); Artijuli Festival, Senja (2012); and Artsenal, Delémont (2010).
The house itself becomes a protagonist in this puppet-like architecture. Ever experimental, Maison is a constant cannibalisation of the house by the house, and by the props that Rebetez and Cauderay have found and made. Walls gobble themselves up, floors devour themselves, beds and their derelict linens and mattresses become animate and weirdly abject. A curious energy is produced in the frenzied ingestion of the house into itself, and in the multiplying of the puppet people into yet others.

This energy is emphasised by a soundtrack collaged from techno-sounds and synthetic music, combined with percussion and modified voices. Chatter and babble, sirens, radio static and flaccid drumming add a scratch-jazzy urgency to the scatology of the enterprise.

No clear narrative is sought or developed – all remains spontaneous, in flux and ephemeral. In spirit, Maison lives within the traditions of magic and surrealism, and could be seen to continue the inventions commenced by artists interested in art brut and those who attempted a kind of borrowed primitivism. Equally, Maison belongs to the legacy of the urban inhabitations and transformations of artists such as Gordon Matta-Clark, whose interest in entropy and architectural alchemy made use of that which was marked for demolition in order to memorialise the disappearing in their monumental, yet fleeting, works.

In Maison, the metaphor of breakdown, re-use and recycling of materials keeps the animation openly organic and makes a kind of ecological statement, linked, as was Matta-Clark’s, to the social concerns for those displaced and de-housed in an environment of commercial colonisation.
Rebetez has held numerous solo exhibitions, including ‘New works’, Swiss Cultural Centre, Paris (2013); ‘Ici vous allez trouver ce que nous cherchons’, Centre Dürrenmatt, Neuchâtel (2013); ‘Thank you to give me all these birds but I am not a sky’, Art and Design Gallery University, Hertfordshire (2013); ‘Hyper-spiritism’, Rencontres d’Arles, Arles (2011); and ‘Gueules de Bois’, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne (2009).

Cauderay studied at the Photography School of Vevey and has worked as an architectural photographer for several construction firms. Rebetez and Cauderay have been collaborating since 2009 and have exhibited work together at Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel (2013); ‘Les Urbaines’, Lausanne (2012); Musée jurassien des Arts, Moutier (2012); Artijuli Festival, Senja (2012); and Artsenal, Delémont (2010).