NUOVO GRAND TOUR
DAVIDE MARCIANESI
SEASON 2025
La Chasse is a contextual project developed by Davide Marcianesi, interdisciplinary designer and artist based in Milan, during his one-month residency at Domaine de Boisbuchet in France. France is the first country in Europe for the number of animals killed through hunting, circa 45 million in the 2022–23 season and for the number of registered licensed hunters, which amounts to over 1 million across the nation. Over millennia, hunting unfolded across a spectrum of diverse embodiments: from survival hunts, to hunting as a tool for providing food, to the ludic practices of European aristocrats in the 18th–19th centuries, which defined their social, economic, and political power over nature and the ecosystem, as much as serving as a form of game. The Domaine once shelter to noble families is indeed located in the French countryside where the hunting season begins each year in September.
The installation, displayed in the attic of the chateau, is composed of two pieces. The main piece portrays the hung body of an undefined and chimeric quadruped, deprived of its recognizable traits (head and limbs), with a laser target aimed at its vital points (a cluster of organs: lungs, heart, and liver). The sculpture references the way animal targets used by hunters for training are represented stripped of any link to life, reduced to devices for human leisure. Beside it, an aluminium sculpture is displayed a section of those same vital points, with its heart exposed. This sculpture embodies archaeological elements from an undefined machinery, tracing a parallel between nature and artifice (as Gilles Aillaud would put it), revealed through the exposure of hybrid entrails.
To hunt, therefore, means not to see animals as living creatures, but rather as mere machines for play in hunting jargon, “Games.”
“The place itself has dragged me into the beauty of manual crafting, which has been both a discovery as much as a way to evolve my artistic practice and skills.”
During the first week of his residency at the Domaine, he focused on preliminary research on the topic and analyzed data, policies, instruments, and technologies related to hunting, followed by days of hands-on studies of animal anatomies of the so-called targets. This work resulted in the creation of a skeletal framework. On top of this structure, he layered textiles and resin until obtaining an empty shell that looked both familiar and anonymous at the same time.
Meanwhile, he learned on-site how to cast aluminium. After some initial experiments, he decided to take advantage of this incredible manufacturing process and created an additional piece rooted in the ancient practice of haruspicy—that is, reading certain animal organs to unravel the future (or, in this case, referencing a thousand-year-old practice).
For him, the Domaine offered much more than a residency: it became a marvelous melting pot of people and practices, an immersion into a hybrid archive of disciplines, and a mesmerizing, inspiring location to develop his project. There, he experimented with many new materials and techniques, spending countless nights working alongside others, amid collective dinners, ping-pong matches, and bonfires.
Photos : Manon Arrougé