raumlaborberlin

„Le 28.06.2013, la ville de Nantes fut conquise par l‘Art.“
„On the 28.06.2013, the city of Nantes was conquered by Art.“

 

The work „28.06.2013, MONUMENTS“ is a collaborative artistic research into the creation of a moment. It celebrates public urban spaces as the spaces for the unplanned occasional encounter with the other, the spaces where the urban culture of tolerance is refined. The open acessibility of the public spaces also makes them potential political spaces, which the work celebrates in a second layer.

 

The work is developed in three phases. Phase one is dedicated to the procedural production, a conceptual sharpening of the work and dialogue. It consists of collective construction, dialogue, shared dinners and talks, the development of ideas, all this in the state of inhabiting the court of the Ecole des beaux Arts in the form of an art production camp. Phase two is the intervention in the city on the day of 28.06.2013, a series of placements of the constructed objects in the city spaces. It is the moment of the surprising encounter of the public with the pieces of Art produced, it is the phase of Art appearing in the space of everyday life. Phase three is the phase of memory to the 28.06.2013 in the form of an exhibition in the place of the production where the objects are on display, as well as some remains of the production workshop.

 

 

Raumlabor came with a set of drawings, inspired by the poetic drawings of the american architect John Hejduk. In his sketches, he talks about a poetic reinterpretation of the trojan horse for and through architecture. raumlabor takes this inspiration and brings it into the arts, into the city of Nantes, into the public spaces of the city. During the workshop the main narrative evolved, away from the military connotation of the trojan horse being a medium of attack and focussing on the object itself. Like this, the question of the possibilty of the monument entered the conversations in the camp. The production shifted accordingly. Four movable monuments were built and two movable instruments.

 

A second inspiration was a conversation with Julieta Aranda after the panel “Questioning the Constraints of Time and the Unpredictability of the Creative Process”. According to her, the time we perceive as presence has been identified as a duration of 6 seconds. But this time can be extended through different techniques, for example through meditation. raumlabor takes this inspiration to ask to extend the presence through the medium of Art. The time element of the work is to place the built monuments in city spaces and let them rest, live with the city for a while. Its a proposition of a possibility. The phases of the work also follow this idea. The day 28.06.2013 became more and more important as a compression of time, of presence, of possibility in one day.

 

The intervention itself was calm and slow. The monuments moved through the city quietly, moved by a group of workers. In their grey working dress making a reference to the workers dress of public services. The monuments were placed in carefully selected positions throughout the city center, left alone to rest and become part of the scenery. Some of the monuments unfold momentary activities as an unforseeable turn, a further compression in the creation of a temporay monument to the presence, to “us – here – now“.

 

 

The six objects built are:

 

1. the monument section:

 

-the obelisk on weels
-the monument to public space
-„le destin“, the strange hairy looking cylinder
-the tower of risk, including the inflatable space

2. the instrument section

 

-the take away wall
-the observer with shifted perspective

 

 

 

LE DESTIN

 

THE TOWER OF RISK

 

 

THE MONUMENT TO PUBLIC SPACE

 

 

THE OBELISK ON WHEELS

 

 

THE TAKE AWAY WALL

 

THE OBSERVER WITH SHIFTED PERSPECTIVE

 

On the 28.06.2013 the workshop group teamed up with a lot of people from Nantes, to move the objects through the city together. Encountering the occasional daily city users mostly unexpected, the pieces started to create their own athmospheric layer in the city. Accumulated moments of intensity unfolded, when the public entered the inflated sphere, the monument to public space released a large and growing cloud of smoke. From “le destin” you could hear seven bangs and turning around you discover a swarm of small paper stripes flying in the air. These two cloud like appearences immediately embraced the winds and started touching the city’s hard surfaces.

 

 

 

raumlaborberlin // Le Voyage à Nantes from MACHINEMACHINE on Vimeo.