Go Soft
Valérie Snobeck
Born in 1980 at Wadena (États-Unis), lives and works in New York (États-Unis).
Date:
2014
Medium:
Video, 98 minutes
Collection:
Collection Lafayette Anticipations - Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin, Paris
View of the exhibition Joining Forces with the Unknown, Valérie Snobeck, 2016
Valerie Snobeck completed a production residency at Lafayette Anticipation – Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette in April 2014. The artist created a film about repairing an old Shell watch, titled Go Soft. This video is inscribed in the continuity of her previous workwhich also examined the famous oil company.
The film was shot on Friday, April 25 at the Fondation. It displays a watch being meticulously and integrally disassembled and reassembled. In one hour, a watchmaker labours to clean the device’s mechanical structure, taking out each piece individually, and restoring it to working order.
On one of the gears is engraved SHELL, reminding the viewer that the watch had been initially greased with Shell oil and detained promotional purposes in the 1940s.
Anthony Castellano (master watchmaker)
Vincent Cueno (executive producer)
Thomas Ozoux (photography)
Christopher Guyot (sound engineer)