 attempts to integrate an artistic intervention with the function and material qualities of the building, making a drawing in space that reinforces the experience of a succession of spatial encounters.

The sculpture is seen both from outside and within the building, and works between the storage and access spaces. It is connected to the elements, the flooded inner courtyards, and the changing conditions of light and sky.

 is catalytic in the way that it uses space, attempting to activate rather than occupy it.

It allows for the flow of visitors moving from the public to the reading spaces across the glazed connecting bridge to continually interact with the work. It is possible to glimpse, in one view, the collapsed perspective forming a cloud that replicates itself in the water; from the other, a frame out into the landscape view to the south.

By breaking and opening the work, it ceases to be a simple object and becomes a catalyser of experience. It plays equally with the subjective experience of the viewer and the objective experience of the building: the viewer becomes implicated in the chain as he passes between the two parts of the work, passing from the hall to the reading rooms.

From outside there is a sense of a cloud breathing within the building.

The transparency of the work is a foil to the open nature of the satellite buildings and the more closed box of the archive storage.

, 2011, metal, 23 × 266 × 26 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

, 2012, 40 mm square stainless steel box section and 65 mm stainless steel ball bearings, 310 × 2970 × 4460. Installation at French National Archives, Paris, France.

, 2012, 40 × 40 grade 316 stainless steel box section & 65 mm stainless steel ball bearings, 310 × 2970 × 4460 cm. Permanent installation, French National Archives, Paris. Photograph by Philippe Servent.

Cloud Chain, French National Archives, Paris

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Cloud Chain