Détours Chaumont

Chaumont, France
September 2020

Invited for the Saisons Culturelles by the Cultural Department of the city of Chaumont, I spent 10 days painting in the streets of the city center to create a graphic itinerary. I painted a total of 55 small and discreet pieces. A booklet has been edited by the city so residents and visitors can go on a quest to find them. The booklets are available at the following venue : Hôtel de Ville (City Council), tourist office, médiathèque Les Silos, the museums and Le Signe Centre National du Graphisme.

saisonsculturelleschaumont.fr/evenement/detours-eltono

1 KM.

During the confinement established to face the COVID-19 crisis in France, a rule was put into place that permitted “brief displacements, within the limit of one hour daily and within a maximum radius of one kilometer around the place of residence”. (https://media.interieur.gouv.fr/deplacement-covid-19/).

Following this rule, I traced a 1 km radius circle on a map around my house and decided to walk on each and every path I could to reach the imposed limit. Arriving at the “border”, I drew a line on the floor. Once the legal limit of my movements was marked, I turned around and walked back home before reaching the one hour time limit.

The result are fragments of a circle delimiting my personal border. The distance is based on the position of one’s house, so each person has their own border. My goal was to reach this intangible limit and, from there, contemplate the temporarily inaccessible beyond.

I finished the 1 KM. project on May 10th 2020, one day before the end of the confinement in France. I reached 21 border points and wandered around 60 km in total.

A huge documentation is available below. You can click on the pictures to see them bigger.

P1

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,4 km
36 minutes round trip

P2

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,3 km
32 minutes round trip

P3

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,7 km
44 minutes round trip

P4

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,3 km
32 minutes round trip

P5

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,5 km
44 minutes round trip

P6

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,2 km
38 minutes round trip

P7

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,4 km
44 minutes round trip

P8

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,5 km
46 minutes round trip

P9

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,6 km
46 minutes round trip

P10

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,7 km
44 minutes round trip

P11

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,7 km
42 minutes round trip

P12

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,6 km
42 minutes round trip

P13

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 2,1 km
50 minutes round trip

P14

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,6 km
42 minutes round trip

P15

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,4 km
36 minutes round trip

P16

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,3 km
35 minutes round trip

P17

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,4 km
34 minutes round trip

P18

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,8 km
45 minutes round trip

P19

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,7 km
38 minutes round trip

P20

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 2,1 km
52 minutes round trip

P21

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,4 km
36 minutes round trip

X Miami

Composition on building
Miami, USA
Project curated by Biinary Studios
07/2018

Thanks @golden305 for the help!
Pictures by Diana @parcialmentenublada

Trames I & II

Composition on tramway
Échappées d’art, Angers, France
Project curated by Winterlong gallery
Summer 2018

Pictures: Thierry Bonnet – Ville d’Angers

“7Y7R7B”

Generative wood block printing
Series of 8 monotypes
Printed at Center Street Studio, Boston, MA, USA
November 2017

www.centerstreetstudio.com

On sale exclusively at www.centerstreetstudio.com

Random Routes

Palma Festival Residency
Le Pavillon, Caen, France
March 2018

“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.

Tourbillons

Palma Festival Residency
Le Pavillon, Caen, France
March 2018

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.

Modo n.º16

Generative and participative painting
La Grette Neighborhood
Besançon, France 04/2017

10 days and 180 participants – project organized by Juste Ici part of a CLEA (local contract of artistic education) with la Butte and la Grette schools.

Thanks to the whole Juste Ici team, to the volunteers, to the MJC Grette-Butte, to the 408 residents, to the teachers of la Butte and la Grette schools and all to the children who participated in the painting.