This work by Pierre Huyghe is based on the true stories of the architect Le Corbusier and the artist Pierre Huyghe’s contacts with the administration of an American university. Once again, Huyghe’s use of historical materials serves as a pretext for a visual reconstruction that combines different disciplines – architecture and theater, literature and news briefs. The film revolves around the commissioning of Le Corbusier to build a pavilion at Harvard University; it becomes a critical statement about what goes on behind the scenes of an architectural project, and gives expression to the violent exchanges between the two parties. The film is constructed as a puppet theater where historical figures are transformed into “characters,” and the brutal reality of modern architecture and its regulations appears inextricable from social and political conflict.
