“Le Pavillon”, the venue where my residency took place and where I showed the results of my experiments in the street, is situated on the tip of the Caen Peninsula. It’s a very interesting area because it is surrounded by water (the St. Pierre Bassin, the Caen à la Mer Canal, the Orne river and the Victor Hugo canal) and currently it’s in the middle of a huge urban transformation. Modern constructions, old factories, abandoned buildings, designed green areas and waste land are all mixed together. This makes it an open space, well defined and perfect for aleatory wandering.
For this exercise, I defined 23 points at key spots around the area (building angles, crossroads and corners). The goal was to walk from one point to another choosing at random the next point. The route started at point n.º1, had to go through 10 points and finished again at point n.º1. The result of each stroll generated a design that was then converted into a wood sculpture using a laser at the local Dôme Fablab. Finally, I painted and exhibited them at the Pavillon. I traced 11 routes myself and 6 were traced by the participants of a workshop with the Fablab. Each sculpture represents a 30 to 40 minutes stroll on a distance from 2 to 3 km.
Crossing the Orne river one day using the Orne-Boom (a boom built in 1908 that is used to regulate the tide) I realized that in font of each door, on the downstream side, the water was forming very powerful whirlpools. The next time I crossed the bridge I saw that the debris that had been floating the day before was still turning around in the same place. I understood that the whirlpools were so strong that any objects caught in them could barely escape. So, I decided to throw some art in one of the strongest whirlpools and see what would happen. After 5 days I decided to get them back and, after quite a lot of trouble, I managed to fish them all out of the water and bring them back to the exhibition space.
Generative and participative painting
Les Grésilles Market
Dijon, France 03/2016
4 days and 30 participants – project organized by Zutique with the participation of the children from the MJC and the social center of the Grésilles neighborhood.
Luce + Eltono
SET Espai d’Art
Plaza Miracle del mocadoret 4, Valencia, Spain
November 13th 2015 – January 12th 2016
“Lugares Comunes” was my first collaboration with Spanish artist Luce. We worked during three weeks on four installations based on observations and experiences we had around the city of Valencia.
1 – Escalera Butrón (break-in ladder):
This piece is about making holes in abandoned plot walls so we can facilitate the access to their interior. The holes were punched following a zig-zag pattern so that they could be used as a ladder. We used hammers and chisels and the holes came out irregular because they were made quickly and illegally. The size had to be big enough so a foot could fit in it. In the gallery, we showed five full scale “break-in ladders” made of wood. They were exact life size replicas and included the same shape, dimensions and arrangement for each hole. Reproducing the holes in wood had to be done rigorously and required precision and accuracy, which was a direct contrast to the way the holes were randomly produced on the street with a hammer and a lot of adrenaline.
2 – Periscopio (periscope):
This is a hollow omega shaped structure we build to be placed on top of deserted plot walls. Inside, a set of mirrors allowed us to literally see through the wall. We attached wheels so the artifact could be moved horizontally offering the viewer a proper exploration of the inside of the plots. In the gallery, we built a wall to support the periscope and showed a video of how people used it to see through different walls around the city.
3 – Asientos Acondicionados (seat conditioner):
All around the city, we observed a lot of unused L shaped brackets on places where an air conditioning unit used to be installed. We decided to exploit them to install a seat. The seat and the backrest leaned on the L squares mounted on the facade of the buildings. For the exhibition, we installed L brackets to set-up one chair and we showed four photographs of one of us sitting on it. These self-portraits served as a witnesses to the performances in the street as well as an opportunity for the public to see the artists enjoying the devices as they contemplate the city from a novel point of view.
4 – Compas (compass):
We used eight wood sticks of different lengths with a hole drilled on one side and a wax crayon attached to the other. In the street, we looked for unused screws coming out of the walls to hang them. These screws became center points to draw curves playing with the restrictions imposed by the position of the screw, the size of the stick and the surrounding elements. Inside the gallery, we reproduced a real situation that we observed in the street formed by eight screws and used the sticks to draw lines on one of the gallery walls. We made eight small scale drawings on paper that serve as a proof of the completion of the mural.
Extras:
Additional actions we did during the preparation of the show. Experimentations that we didn’t show in the exhibition but that were part of the process.
I have been doing research around the idea of “creating while walking” for a long time now (see the Promenades Project I did in Beijing: www.eltono.com/en/projects/promenades), my last idea was to register friction during a walk and I came up with the idea of RUFO – RUFO is a typical dog name in French and also the name of a toy dog that was released in the 80´s. I decided the four letters would stand for “Rudimentary Unidentified Frictional Object”.
Basically, I wanted to drag an artwork along a defined path and register the way it decays. I was doing tests around this idea when I was asked to participate in Artmossphere Biennial in Moscow so I decided to do the first RUFO experiment in the street of the Russian capital. I painted 11 wood boards with bold colored graphics and one by one dragged them around the city on different paths I had selected earlier (around the exhibition space, in random neighborhood, around the Red Square, around the hotel…). Each walk was between one and two kilometers, except for RUFO #9 where I walked for 2,5 kilometers and the painting almost disappeared entirely. Having the artwork interacting with the outside was crucial – showing artworks in the state they came out of the studio doesn’t interest me – my idea was to “print” the city onto each board turning them into witnesses of a walk, an experience. On the back of each board I showed the map of the walk and all the data generated (date, time, duration, distance and name of the streets wandered) – note that during the biennial, I showed reproductions of the back of the boards on spare boards for the people to understand better the story.
Pictures by Natalia Solovieva – Thanks to everybody at Artmosspere and to the people from Codered.
The Promenades Project is about walking, observation and spontaneity. It’s about wandering in the city with no pressure, no time limit, no goal apart from walking and enjoying it. It’s about walking with total freedom of time and space to be able to do all that things that you always want to do but you don’t because you have no time. It’s about moving crosscurrent in the city with time for contemplation to be able to observe details that most people don’t notice.
Rules
Rule #1: Walk and, if possible, create something on the way. Rule #2: Only use material found during the walk – the only material I allow myself to bring is for
documentation (notebook, phone, camera) and a bag. Rule #3: Only execute ideas created during the walk – or a predecessor walk. Rule #4: Enjoy the walk.
This journal is a straight chronological transcription of what happened during each walk.
