Hold up

by Martina Stella

The company Hold up was active in the 1970s, in France and internationally. Founded by Max and Catherine, the company worked with analog projection in public space, anticipating the advent of contemporary agencies and studios. Jerzy Strzelecki, known as Max, was a Polish-born photographer, while Catherine was an artist: she created the images, and he was in charge of the diffusion devices.
They worked with a hijacked Ludwig Pani projector. They lived at 4 rue du Braque, in the 4th arrondissement of Paris, in an apartment that was a center of culture and creation, mixing workshop space, living space and recording studio.
They have worked on large-scale projects: monumental projections on the facades of the Pantheon and the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, a 360° show on Niemeyer's Volcano in Le Havre, but also more commercial projects, such as the Fameuse Féerie Haussmann in front of Galeries Lafayette and Printemps, or the installation of a screen suspended over the sea in Jamaica, for the Philips company.

They have installed projectors on trucks, on boats, they have projected on mountains, for the Avoriaz Festival. They collaborated with theater, worked in live shows, animated the first show of Jean Michel Jarre on the Place de la Concorde. They were the real precursors of a certain spectacular way of animating the public space. 

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