Amie Siegel: Provenance, 2013, video, 40 1/2 minutes. Courtesy Simon Preston.
Amie Siegel’s new film Provenance (2013) documents tasteful homes from London to San Francisco that have all been furnished with chairs, desks or side tables designed by Le Corbusier for his government complex in Chandigarh, India. In recent years these exotic artifacts of mid-century modernity have been flowing into the West through the pristine auction houses that Siegel also documents; signs of bureaucratic wear and tear apparently only add value. When Provenance finally reaches Chandigarh, we see crumbling furniture in use by Indian clerks as well as what we now know to be millions of dollars’ worth of chairs and desks stacked in piles, discarded by office workers who embrace the ugly, ergonomic comfort of the 21st century.