Julia Borderie & Éloïse Le Gallo

ÆQUO, 2023

Film, 20'23

Production: Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains

This work lies at the intersection of cinema, sculpture, and science, activating the imagination of geological narratives in a context of climate emergency. It brings together Alpine glaciers filmed on film and underwater landscapes reconstructed in 3D, exploring the complementarities between learned and sensory forms, between abstract concepts and perceptions of the world. The artists collaborated with scientific institutions. The film begins with the sound of an alphorn resonating in the mountains, while the glaciers melt. From a distance, on an oceanographic boat, geologists probe the invisible seabed.

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Partnerships: Sorbonne University [ Direction Science, culture et société; Laboratoire Paleo-climate and Basins | UPMC - Institut des Sciences de la Terre de Paris; Laboratoire Géosciences Océan | UBO, Brest; Laboratoire d'Océanographie de Villefranche | Institut de la Mer de Villefranche]; French Ocean Fleet operated by Ifremer; Eliis, publisher of seismic interpretation software; Festival Ovni and Hôtel Windsor, Nice; La HEAD, Département Cinéma | Option Son, Genève

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With :

Jean-Philippe Adam, François Baudin, Madjid Bouayard-Agha, Matthieu Bressac, Patrick Costagutto, Charline Dally, Leila Gharbi, Stéphanie Girardclos, Melek Golbol, Christian Gorini, Carla Larvor, Camille Le Piver, Quentin L'helgoualc'h, Ambre Miserey, Luc Moreau, Dia Ninkabou, Nicolas Perrillat, Louis Petiteau, Jules Ramage, Emilie Riquier, Jean-Baptiste Rohou, Claudio Rosenberg, Clément Schneider, Paco Stil, Lucas Tortarolo.

Director of photography: Aurore Toulon, Victor Zébo

Camera assistant: Lucas Plançon | Music: Martin Balmand | Sound recording: Christine Dancausse, Louis Lamarche | Paleoscan images: Julia Borderie & Eloïse Le Gallo, Lucas Tortarolo | Paleoscan technical support: Jean-Philippe Adam | 3D technical support: Alexandre Peschmann, Thibaut William, Cyprien Quairiat
Editing: Julia Borderie & Eloïse Le Gallo with Laura Rius Aran | Sound editing: Benjamin Poilane, Mondine Ondin | Calibration: Aurore Toulon | Mixing: Yannick Delmaire, Blandine Tourneux | Recorder: Tom Nollet |Graphics: Margot Duvivier |Guest artist: Julien Prévieux

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Geobodies, 2025

Installation of salt and ice sculptures, variable dimensions

The character-sculptures from the film Æquo are shown here for the first time in an installation, resonating with the context of the town of Sion: proximity to the Rhône glacier and the Bex salt mine. These forms have been generated by scientific tools for artistic purposes: to give substance to the scientific data, the artists have extracted several geological bodies in 3D from the Paleoscan software. This geological software compiles and processes the sound signals sent to probe the seabed to create 3D imagery. The initial sound signal was then transposed from one language to another, and printed by a 3D printer to give birth to these ice and salt forms. Complementary, they are destined to metamorphose and disappear on contact with each other: becoming ocean and becoming glacier, intimately intertwined. This ephemeral sculptural gesture, like a tool for new hypotheses, materializes a world in transition. These forms attempt to freeze time for as long as they can, in the current context of climate emergency, where the machine is both a vector of vision and of loss.

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Impressions of the Valais, 2025

16mm film (working title)

As a return to the roots of the Æquo project, which was originally filmed in Valais, the artists propose an experimental stroll filmed with a 16mm Bolex camera, between the Rhone glacier, the Bex salt mine, whose stratifications are reminiscent of marine sedimentation, and the underground lake of Saint Léonard.

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Julia Borderie and Eloïse Le Gallo

Born in 1989
Based in Paris

A duo of French artist-directors, Eloïse Le Gallo & Julia Borderie make the experience of otherness a condition of artistic creation. Since 2016, in an exploratory mode, they have been working together to explore the profound interaction that water has with the territories it bathes, from source to ocean, tracing the genesis of the beings who live there and the geological origin of the materials in the landscape. In a poetic documentary approach, the camera's eye acts as a catalyst for encounters, while questioning the human gestures that shape materials and territories. At the heart of a mesh of viewpoints and disciplines (craft techniques, geology, chemistry, marine biology, etc.) their work develops at the crossroads of sculpture and cinema. Recently, their research has led them to examine more specifically the complementarities between learned form and sensitive form, in collaborations with scientists around forms generated by their cutting-edge technological tools. 

Developing their projects during residencies, they show their films at numerous international festivals (Winterthur, Festival du nouveau cinéma de Montréal, Vidéoformes, Festival dei Popoli, Ovni) and take part in group and solo exhibitions (Maison des arts de Grand Quevilly (2024), La Maréchalerie - center d'art contemporain de l'ENSA Versailles (2022), Cac La Traverse Alfortville (2021), Gac Annonay (2020), Galerie/Espace d'art contemporain du théâtre de Privas (2018, France), Biennale d'Architecture de Venise (2018).