The second video of the Digital Exchange screening series by the Pushkin Museum is the work Élysée (2016) by French artist Laurent Grasso. The camera’s eye examines the interior of the Salon doré, the cabinet of the Presidents of the 5th Republic, in the Élysée Palace. Historical objects live next to the witnesses of contemporary world: notepads, buttons of direct communication between the President and ministers, as well as today media publications, including those covering terrorist attacks that occurred in Paris just before the filming. François Hollande, head of the state at that moment, praised the work, seeing his office in a new way.

The interior that Grasso captures is a space of mental projection of several generations of the political elite of France and, at the same time, an intimate and solemn portrait of the power as such. The magic of the images flow continues in the soundtrack created by Nicholas Godin, a member of the French electronic duo Air.

Today, right from where you are, you can travel to the most protected cabinet in Europe, join the look of the artist, sliding on the elegant surfaces of the interior and to try to solve with him the eternal riddle of enchantment of power.