FOR AND WITH GILLES CLEMENT

2021

Inspired by the concept of the “garden in motion” New Relation designed a gardener’s garment specially conceived and elaborated for and with its author, the gardener and landscape designer Gilles Clément. This unique custom-made piece is a metamorphosis made from second-hand clothes and deadstock fabrics. Beyond its utilitarian function, this garment appears as a garden, a landscape, a translation and partial reflection of both the gardener and his practice. The adjustable garment is composed of fluid lines mixing colours and intertwining shapes reminiscent of plants and insects such as the Gazé, a white butterfly with black veins found in his garden in the Creuse.

A filmed document captures this garment in movement, animated by the gestures, the cuts and the various interventions that Gilles Clément makes in his garden. The action of gardening is perceived as a dance, a choreography made up of multiple, complex and evolving relationships, a kind of improvisational contact between the gardener and the living entities, plants and other alterities that live in his garden.

Like a breath of fresh air, punctuated by alternating close-up and distant still shots, this short film captures an atmosphere and shows a landscape where the human and the non-human seem to be entangled.

Credits:
Directed by Harald Hutter & New Relation
Edited by Lucas Pandolfio