Distance

Every other summer, Le Grand Café takes over the LiFE in the submarine base in Saint-Nazaire, and invites an artist to create a specific project for this exceptional space. The physical configuration of the site calls into question the formats that art can take – in this case the monumental – as much as it questions our activity as spectators. After Anthony MacCall (Great-Britain) in 2009, Simone Decker (Luxembourg) in 2011 and The Chapuisat Brothers (Switzerland) in 2012, the danish artist Jeppe Hein is invited to invest the place with Distance. The spectacle of movement and its impact on the perception are at the heart of the project that Jeppe Hein has imagined. Weightlessness, gravity, speed: Distance both fascinates and disorientates visitors. Caught up in the inexorable mechanical ballet of the white balls, they move through a real dynamic space created by the sculpture and lose their landmarks. Thus begins the experience of connecting with the work, the encounter, towards which the situations created by Jeppe Hein are always aimed.