Eve Sussman & The Rufus Corporation

Disintegration at Hydra is a production still from The Rape of the Sabine Women, a film project by Eve Sussman and a fluctuating collective of actors, designers, and filmmakers known as the Rufus Corporation. The film dramatizes the ancient legend of the Sabine women, in which the Roman tribe kidnapped and married women from a neighboring village. In this climactic battle scene, the Sabines attack the Romans to rescue their sisters and daughters. Horrified by the violence, the women heroically enter the battle to make peace between the rival clans.

The inspiration and visual basis for the film, particularly the scene captured in this photograph, is Jacques-Louis David’s large neoclassical painting The Intervention of the Sabine Women (1799, Musée du Louvre). While David worked with studio models equipped with historical costumes and props, these figures wear contemporary clothing, blending the ancient world with the present. Sussman filmed much of the project on location in Greece, auditioning local actors to become members of the Rufus Corporation, with the idea that their Greek gestures and voices would contribute unexpected new dimensions to the production and enhance its authenticity as an evocation of the ancient world. The choice of models is thus a crucial element within the concept and staging of this elaborate project.