Le Génie Civil

During late October and November 2025 we are showing Le Génie Civil by Claes Söderquist and Jan Håfström on Lill-skärmen in the corridor on the ground floor of Sveavägen 65. The film is part of a filmprogram curated by Filmform.

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) is a Swedish artist, filmmaker and curator. Jan Håfström (born 1937) is one of his generation’s most acclaimed painters and sculptors. Additionally, Håfström has also worked with film as an artform since the 1960’s and he has both directed and participated in several films. He has said that he learned to dream in the cinemas.