Soft Power

The project originates from the artist’s immersion at the Banc National d’Épreuve in Saint-Étienne, the only center in France authorized to test, certify, neutralize, and destroy civilian firearms. Access to this strictly controlled and publicly inaccessible space required extensive applications, negotiations, and preparations. This approach, at the intersection of documentary and performance, is integral to the artist’s process: by seeking to cross these institutional thresholds, Louise Vo Tan exposes herself to the very experience of control and constraint that she films.

The administrative traces of these procedures—protocols, emails, forms—constitute a parallel archive, sometimes incorporated into other works. Within this highly regulated, technical, and secret environment, she films gestures of control, destruction protocols, and the mechanics of domesticated violence. Her images make visible what is normally beyond view: the transformation of objects designed to kill into inert matter, and the paradoxical beauty of gestures meant to contain violence.