Since the middle of the 2000s, Anne-Valérie Gascelle has spearheaded projects which are both strategies of destruction intended to provoke the destruction of reality and call into question what can be removed, what is permanent and established. Whether the artist creates destruction using explosives, sound waves, hydraulic sabotage, by weakening structures or by fire, each strategy devised by the artist is designed to create this sense of a tipping point, one where there are no bearings in terms of time and space. Within these gaps where doubt exists, art can happen “at the precise moment when nothing is certain, or to put it differently, when everything is possible”-V. Gasc).

In defining her artistic approach, and more widely, the role of the artist, Gasc likes to quote Michel Foucault “I am a firework maker. I make something to be used for a siege, for a war, for destruction. I am not in favour of, but I am in favour of being able to pass, to advance, to make the walls fall down….” (‘Je suis un artificier’ 1975, in Roger-Pol Droit, Michel Foucault, discussion)

Thecomplete Crash Box project can be consulted here.