Emmanuelle Luciani presents Crystal Crypt for Baccarat, a total work of art to be performed on the occasion of the Salone del Mobile in Milan. Comprising an original film, sound piece, scenography, and choreography, the project situates the manufacture within an alternate temporality, transforming it into a mythology where past, present, and future overlap.

Inspired by the Baccarat manufacture, Envisioned as a kind of cosmodrome where immutable craftsmanship coexists with cells of innovation, Crystal Crypt unfolds as an epic, twilight fresco, propelling crystal into a distant future. In the wake of Philip K. Dick, the primary reference of Southway Studio (Emmanuelle Luciani and Alex Dante), or like a video game scenario, the work portrays a world in which crystal has become a lost knowledge, mastered only by a few artisans hidden at the edges of the galaxy.

“I looked at this Manufacture as a temporal bubble, a vessel-cathedral of unique craftsmanship inhabited by dancer-artisans. From this was born Crystal Crypt, a complete work of art, like a science-fiction short story blending movement, film, scenography and sound. The crystallization of an alternate time.” 

— Emmanuelle Luciani

About Emmanuelle Luciani 

Emmanuelle Luciani is an artist, scenographer, and choreographer. She practices a form of contextual art, constructing hybrid worlds and total works of art in which popular cultures, heritage, science fiction, and craftsmanship merge. Her work revolves around specific projects such as large-scale performances where she designs the set, scenography, and choreography, as well as object design, exhibitions, and performances. These hybrid and contextual works are the sum of heterogeneous references ranging from funerary and medieval art to urban cultures, from Philip K. Dick to philosophy, from Romanticism to futuristic aesthetics. Through this ecosystem, the performative and scenographic work of Southway Studio activates the past as a living material, infused with sci-fi and cyberpunk aesthetics where past, present, and future collide.