Spaceship – Bordeaux (FRANCE)

Flying saucer – Wet Dock n°1 in Bordeaux (France) – 2018

Creation / Suzanne Treister / B O L D
Curatorial / Project Management / B O L D
Design Engineering / Manufacture / Métalobil
Installation / Métalobil / Zebra3 / Balineau
Contracting owner / Bordeaux Métropole

Suzanne Treister has created the « Bordeaux’ vessels » triptych for Bordeaux metropolis: 3 monumental and interdependent creations installed in 3 areas of this territory. The Londoner artist explores the use of technologies linked to the city and its history.

The spaceship, huge flying saucer overhanging the first wet dock of Bordeaux, is the second artwork of this triptych.

Suzanne Treister explains: « I visualized one of these decaying Second World War vessels being transformed – many decades after the German defeat – into a luminous spaceship, deriving from but no longer a war vessel, lifting history and transforming it into the present day and towards a hypothetical future, as a reminder of war and conflict but also as an encouragement towards a different type of future, a future to be imagined and constructed.”

After long searches to find a company able to technically design the object, to manufacture and install it, Eric Troussicot from B O L D agency, the triptych project manager and curator, came to us.

And that’s how we realized this work that is 17m diameter, in galvanized steel, covered with anodized aluminum plates which have been riveted to the structure. Tilted of 15 degrees, the flying saucer looks like perched on steel poles; themselves are fixed on a submerged galvanized steel platform.

Few figures:

• 3330 hours : 1/3 studying at our research department, 1/3 manufacturing in our workshop, 1/3 installation on site
• 17m diameter
• 5m high
• 210 000 rivets
• 1000m² of aluminum
• 13 tonnes