Palace of the Machines
The illustrious grounds of a luxurious villa in the South of France are transformed into the home of a visionary yet maniacal professor of cybernetics. Having dedicated his life to the fusion of humans and machines, tonight he opens the doors for the first time in 50 years.
The Palace of the Machines is a show, a party and a strange experience full of secrets to discover. Enter through the gates and be drawn into a tantalising story of circuit boards and surgery, blood and guts, love and betrayal – sitting somewhere between Monty Python, The Lobster and Metropolis.
A one night only celebration of the limits of flesh and the wonders of metal.
Commissioned for Cannes Lions 2016.
Tonight, in the Villa de la Deux Tetes, there is a party. For 50 years, these gates have been chained shut. Smoke billows out occasionally, lights flash and muffled explosions resound – but no human has passed through the gates since 1966. Even the postmen have no idea what happens to the strange-shaped parcels they are instructed to leave outside on the pavement.
On the streets of Cannes, rumours circulate that the man who owned the Villa was a genius who fell in love with machines – a surgeon who specialised in the insertion of technology into human beings. 50 years ago, he shut himself and his employees away to work on the golden goal: the ultimate human/robot hybrid.
In the last month, mysterious invitations have been sent out to certain key individuals and tonight, the Doctor is ready to show the world what he has been up to all these years. But as his guests find their way around his exotic Villa and meet it’s residents, they hear seditious murmurs in the shadowy corners of the garden. The Doctor isn’t quite as friendly as he seems, and there will be trouble before the night is done.
Behind the closed gates, he has been wildly experimenting on all the employees of the house. He has been replacing parts of their bodies with machines – removing heart, liver, spleen, kidneys… and putting circuit boards and robotics in their place.
Tonight, he is making his most specialized model yet – he is going to insert a human stomach into a machine and make the perfect cyborg bride.
