Bassae Bassae

From a distance nothing but a white tent in the lonely heights. Inside it, the remains of the Temple of Apollo Epikourios near Bassae in the Western Peloponnese. The cryptic doubling in the title of the video work refers to the original model, Jean-Daniel Pollet’s film Bassae. This was made in 1964 and documents the then free-standing temple on film. Fabien Giraud and Raphaël Siboni have restaged Pollet’s film with a high degree of accuracy but without his speaking voice in the off. The temple, situated in the midst of the Arcadian mountains and encased in a protective tent since 1987, is always shown in a long shot, from dawn to dusk in the course of a day. A white tent seen from afar in changing light, accompanied by the sounds of nature, birdsong and the sighing of the wind. It is visibly hidden, isolated from the beauty of the wide landscape. Cross-cuts into the inside of the tent keep bringing it close to us again and again. The camera glides effortlessly through the relic of the past. Calm and supple. Close to the floor slabs, along pillars, flutes, their cracks and fissures. The camera documents, scans, touches carefully, sidles through the rows of pillars. One can almost feel the stone. Droning. Muffled rumbling. Mystical booming. What has been lost appears under a white cover. The tent fabric protects the stone and is itself already a monument in need of protection. Once a place for praying, now there is digging and restoring. Was. The building site is abandoned. The living are laying themselves to rest. And how are the gods? (Kollektiv)

*We can only show an excerpt of this work in the online archive. For the complete version, please contact the artists.