Le Génie Civil

Claes Söderquist & Jan Håfström, Le Génie Civil, 1967, 11 min. Courtesy of Filmform.

Claes Söderquist (whose film Landskap you can see on the big screen in the atrium) went to the Royal Institute of Art together with Jan Håfström (the artist represented in the Red Corridor one floor up) in the 1960s. Together they wanted to create a film consisting of only still images, and used a collection of pictures, drawings and engravings from engineering journals from the 1880s that they together developed and filmed. The film Le Génie Civil consists of these pictures - illustrating the advancement of industrialism and the technology optimism in the late 1800's - interacting with a collage of noise from trains, rain, thunder, a ticking clock and organ music. 

Claes Söderquist, born 1939 in Stockholm, is a Swedish artist, filmmaker and curator. He was educated at Konstfack in Stockholm and at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm during the 1960s. He has been active as a filmmaker since the early 1960’s. Among early films we find I frack (1964), Le Génie Civil (1967), together with Jan Håfström, (and shown at the small corridor on the ground floor of SSE) .

Encounters with jazz and experimental films shown at Moderna Museet during the 1960’s were important influences for Söderquist’s emerging artistry. Beyond his artisanship, Söderquist has carried out projects as a film curator. With exhibitions such as Pleasure Dome and Västtysk experimentfilm, shown at Moderna Museet in Stockholm 1980 and 1984 respectively, and the extensive Swedish Avantgarde Film 1924-1990, which toured the USA in 1991, he has brought experimental film to the fore in Sweden, but has also spread awareness of Swedish experimental film internationally.