Permanent artwork in Seniorenzentrum Dornach-Auhof, Linz, Austria
Linz, Austria, 5 photographs
silkscreened on enamelled sheet metal
I made this artwork in 1999 in Seniorenzentrum Dornach-Auhof, a residence
for seniors. This artwork is made up of 5 photographs
silkscreened on enamelled sheet metal. They are located in different parts of
the building which are favourable for meetings and discussions.
Photographs come from inhabitants and from the staff working in the residence,
they are cropped.
These five
elements form an indissoluble whole althought each picture has a distinctive
title :
1 Woman in
a wheat field (located in dining room)
2 Man on
the river (located in dining room)
3 Summer wind
(located in dining room)
4 Young
people and cigarettes (located in the living room on the first floor)
5 Tea time
(located in the living room on the last floor)
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Cleunay : Its People
Permanent artwork, Rennes
Rennes, 1998, Silkscreened images on 3M film reflective decals on aluminium signs in urban space.
In 1998, I was invited by the city of Rennes to make a piece in the context of the city’s policy of public commissions, instituted about ten years ago. For my part, I was invited to work in the Cleunay neighborhood, a residential area that had had a negative image for a long time as far as people in downtown Rennes pictured it.
I soon decided that to make a monumental and central piece in Cleunay, a fairly commonplace neighborhood whose centre is difficult to find, was impossible. So I spent some time meeting people and associations to try to understand the nature of life in such an ordinary place, of this place that appealed to me. Cleunay in 1950 was an emergency housing estate, put up by Father Pierre, to accommodate rural and working class families, attracted by runaway industrialization and transformations produced by the post-war reconstruction of France. For the inhabitants of the downtown area, at the time, going to live in Cleunay meant « getting closer to riffraff » ; the expression was used in front of me. For the « Cleunaysians » on the other hand, living in Cleunay meant trying to gain respect and the necessary public services : bus shelters, a post office, playing fields, a social centre, etc. To live in Cleunay was, in the sixties, to live in the heart of a cooperative and militant community.
I said to myself more and more that there wasn’t much to see here. The work of art, indeed, needed to not correct that. I thus created a piece entitled Cleunay : Its People. It appears in the guise of nine large aluminium signs placed on the verge of two boulevards that constitute a major trunk road, much travelled by Rennes’ downtown inhabitants and by those who live in the neighborhood. They show computer-processed images and texts. They are a formal retort to the brown official « tourist information » signs – the expression is that of the DDE* – that one finds along French and European roads and motorways. It’s exactly the kind of sign that techno-political power uses when it prompts people to look at a landscape it considers « remarkable ».
NOTES * The French Highways Agency (translator’s note).
In 1998, I was invited by the city of Rennes to make a piece in the context of the city’s policy of public commissions, instituted about ten years ago. For my part, I was invited to work in the Cleunay neighborhood, a residential area that had had a negative image for a long time as far as people in downtown Rennes pictured it.
I soon decided that to make a monumental and central piece in Cleunay, a fairly commonplace neighborhood whose centre is difficult to find, was impossible. So I spent some time meeting people and associations to try to understand the nature of life in such an ordinary place, of this place that appealed to me. Cleunay in 1950 was an emergency housing estate, put up by Father Pierre, to accommodate rural and working class families, attracted by runaway industrialization and transformations produced by the post-war reconstruction of France. For the inhabitants of the downtown area, at the time, going to live in Cleunay meant « getting closer to riffraff » ; the expression was used in front of me. For the « Cleunaysians » on the other hand, living in Cleunay meant trying to gain respect and the necessary public services : bus shelters, a post office, playing fields, a social centre, etc. To live in Cleunay was, in the sixties, to live in the heart of a cooperative and militant community.
I said to myself more and more that there wasn’t much to see here. The work of art, indeed, needed to not correct that. I thus created a piece entitled Cleunay : Its People. It appears in the guise of nine large aluminium signs placed on the verge of two boulevards that constitute a major trunk road, much travelled by Rennes’ downtown inhabitants and by those who live in the neighborhood. They show computer-processed images and texts. They are a formal retort to the brown official « tourist information » signs – the expression is that of the DDE* – that one finds along French and European roads and motorways. It’s exactly the kind of sign that techno-political power uses when it prompts people to look at a landscape it considers « remarkable ».
NOTES * The French Highways Agency (translator’s note).
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Thoughts of Saïda, Amélie and Al Sola (1996)
FNAC (National Art Collection of Contemporary Art), Paris
FNAC (National Art Collection of Contemporary Art), Paris
Paris, 1996, postcards in display case, slide show, gallery installation.
This piece was realized thanks to the collaboration of the priest of Saint-Eustache Church in Paris and to members of the Saint-Eustache AIDS Solidarity Association, which helps strengthen ties between the ill and those close to them. These individuals have struggled a lot so that society may better take into account socially the problems of exclusion that AIDS generates.
I’ve met people who have this disease – « ordinary » sick people, so to speak –, as well as volunteers, friends, priests, families, social workers…
I collected texts taken from the friendliest as well as the most ordinary correspondence (letters or postcards), received or written by the sick. The texts selected are slices of life that talk about places. Personal photographs of landscapes, taken by the sick during moments of respite from the disease, were also collected. These images of landscapes relate to these individuals’ lives. Out of these texts and photographs, I made a series of seven images destined to become postcards, and to be projected.
What also interested me was that the postcard is in fact a public and a private space. These postcards have been published and sold. The sales profits were donated to the Saint-Eustache AIDS Solidarity Association.
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O Meu Jardim (1996)
Temporary work, Luxembourg
Temporary work, Luxembourg
Luxembourg, 1996, salvaged materials, topsoil, plants, paint, urban installation, inhabitants’ actions.
Along the Boulevard Royal, in a small 300-square-metre plaza paved with well-cut cobblestones in downtown Luxembourg, I created with Joao Bento, a retired worker, a « sculpture-garden » that disturbed the neatness of the Grand Duchy’s prosperous capital. Le Casino, Luxembourg’s contemporary art centre, had solicited me to make the piece.
Immigrant workers from Portugal are abundant in Luxembourg. Some have managed to create vegetable gardens on plots of uncertain status at the city’s edges. I met Joao in just such a context. I suggested that he recreate a garden, as he would have had another plot been attributed to him, in particular one in the downtown area, in the emblematic space of municipal prestige. I suggested that he play a kind of « game » with me : together we would build in a public area, under his technical direction, a private place not subject to the usual social codes ; more specifically, a shack, a garden with a fence, comestible plants rather than decorative ones, and some chickens and rabbits… He accepted. He was very dedicated.
The garden was « set up » in three days. Everything had been prepared by Joao and I during the three preceding months : finding materials, sowing and planting in flowerpots in his « real garden » in Beggen… The soil was brought by the park service. The materials used were all salvaged elements that people donated or that we found on construction sites or at the dump.The sculpture lasted three months. During this time, the garden was cultivated, the chickens and rabbits raised and the shack inhabited by Joao and his visiting friends. We paid so much attention to detail that this fake-garden seemed to have been there forever. Everything seemed to passersby as though the current city had developed around this space, without being able to suppress it, making this place, consequently, a kind of pocket of resistance.
Immigrant workers from Portugal are abundant in Luxembourg. Some have managed to create vegetable gardens on plots of uncertain status at the city’s edges. I met Joao in just such a context. I suggested that he recreate a garden, as he would have had another plot been attributed to him, in particular one in the downtown area, in the emblematic space of municipal prestige. I suggested that he play a kind of « game » with me : together we would build in a public area, under his technical direction, a private place not subject to the usual social codes ; more specifically, a shack, a garden with a fence, comestible plants rather than decorative ones, and some chickens and rabbits… He accepted. He was very dedicated.
The garden was « set up » in three days. Everything had been prepared by Joao and I during the three preceding months : finding materials, sowing and planting in flowerpots in his « real garden » in Beggen… The soil was brought by the park service. The materials used were all salvaged elements that people donated or that we found on construction sites or at the dump.The sculpture lasted three months. During this time, the garden was cultivated, the chickens and rabbits raised and the shack inhabited by Joao and his visiting friends. We paid so much attention to detail that this fake-garden seemed to have been there forever. Everything seemed to passersby as though the current city had developed around this space, without being able to suppress it, making this place, consequently, a kind of pocket of resistance.
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La Villeneuve (1996)
La Villeneuve Grenoble, 1996, Photographic image printed by Scanachrome on milar fabric glued on wood and installed on pavement of collective facility, texts silkscreened on enamelled sheet metal placed in park.
In 1996, Grenoble art centre Le Magasin and the France Foundation gave me the opportunity to make a piece in La Villeneuve neighborhood in Grenoble. I’ve lived there for eight months at regular intervals. I wanted to capture from the inside what could be lived and said in this « problem » neighborhood, stigmatized by the press and by downtown inhabitants. Indeed, this place gives the impression of being a hostile citadel, when one gets off at the Les Bruyères tramway stop and sees such an imposing ridge of buildings. Once the ridge and the view of the park are cleared, things change : the swimming pool, the schools, the sports facilities, the playing fields, the cultural and outdoor centres, everything strives towards a possible social life, a more peaceful one.
I chose two spots in the housing estate. I started by working on a building’s pavement area, in the heart of the « citadel », where waste lands, thrown out of certain occupants’ windows just above this spot ; there were greasy wrappers, trolleys, filth… I washed everything, and then I put, on this very pavement, ten metres above the ground, under the occupants’ windows, an enlarged photo (9 m2 in surface area and slightly creased, glued onto two wooden panels), a little as though it had « fallen there », as if it too had been thrown out. It’s a photo of a happy moment taken by a young couple who authorized me to make this gesture. I simply enlarged and positioned this run-of-the-mill photo. Afterwards, people continued to toss rubbish. In another, more peaceful spot, near the park, where families gather in the summer, I planted enamelled signs onto which words are silkscreened in the ground, words taken from postcards that the locals write to each other during vacation. They are the simple words of inhabitants, left in a place of calm and encounter.
I chose two spots in the housing estate. I started by working on a building’s pavement area, in the heart of the « citadel », where waste lands, thrown out of certain occupants’ windows just above this spot ; there were greasy wrappers, trolleys, filth… I washed everything, and then I put, on this very pavement, ten metres above the ground, under the occupants’ windows, an enlarged photo (9 m2 in surface area and slightly creased, glued onto two wooden panels), a little as though it had « fallen there », as if it too had been thrown out. It’s a photo of a happy moment taken by a young couple who authorized me to make this gesture. I simply enlarged and positioned this run-of-the-mill photo. Afterwards, people continued to toss rubbish. In another, more peaceful spot, near the park, where families gather in the summer, I planted enamelled signs onto which words are silkscreened in the ground, words taken from postcards that the locals write to each other during vacation. They are the simple words of inhabitants, left in a place of calm and encounter.
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Fanninberg (1995)
Permanent artwork, Fanninberg, Austria
Fanningberg (Austria), 1995, photographs on porcelain, photographs silkscreened on enamelled sheet metal in rural village, villagers’ actions.
I spent fifteen days in the land of Salzburg, Austria in the spring of 1995. I settled on a little hamlet of the Hohe Tauern mountains, Fanningberg, hundred and twenty kilometers south of Salzburg in the Mauterndorf municipality (Lungau). The Fanningberg locality consists of around ten rural families who complement their income by renting rooms to vacationers. Their houses are imposing, built out of wood from the neighboring forests. In spite of increasingly invasive modernity and tourism, one is struck by Fanningberg, by the telluric appearance of the environment. Here nature could crush everything, and it often still does with avalanches and overflowing streams.
I rented a room with a local family on this mountain, where man is united with nature. I spent time associating with the population, outside as well as inside their houses, photographing documents, objects, and clothes. Here, I concerned myself much more with the people of today, with women farmers responsible for the family farm’s dairy production, with their clothes, their blouses featuring repetitive and relatively universal flower motifs.
Around these five farms, along the small winding road, on the walls of houses, against wooden barns, among piles of boards, on a trailer, I put up enamelled sheets which display borrowed photographs. I also included photographs I had taken of parts of the women’s clothing. The whole piece is made up of twelve parts. The installation evolves according to the life of the space that contains it, through the initiative of the peasants, who can move the enamelled sheets according to their needs as farm holders and inhabitants.
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L'Atelier de l'Office (1993)
Permanent artwork, Ivry sur Seine
Ivry-sur-Seine, 1993, photos on porcelain, laminated photos, photos and texts silkscreened on enamelled sheet metal, business office installation, workers’ actions.
In 1993, after two days of wandering in Ivry-sur-Seine, I decided I needed to conceive a project involving the workplaces of a great many workers and technicians, in this suburb marked by the world of labour. My original idea was to work on the many workshop doors opening onto the street. Little by little I came to the decision that I’d go further by intervening directly in the work space of one or more businesses. The housing maintenance and renovation workshop of the departmental Office of HLMs* soon stood out as an interesting location.
I concerned myself with the way these occupants had of « inhabiting » these spaces that « belonged » to them, with their way of painting certain doors of their work environment in green or yellow, since this green paint was available, left over from work sites. We agreed to renovate the entire space with the colours they had immediately available. We then agreed that I would place photos and texts, found in the secretaries’ « files » or the workers’ lockers (with their permission and after meeting each other).
I put up eleven photographs on enamelled porcelain, and texts silkscreened onto enamelled sheets in the HLM Office workshop space. These texts all come from the resident workers and technicians. Six years later, since some simply laminated photos had deteriorated, I was surprised to see that the workers and technicians’ association had raised funds to allow one large photo to be restored. They have had it redone in enamel to guarantee a long life span for this joint production.
NOTES * The French equivalent of council housing (translator’s note).
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Saint-Carré (1991)
Permanent Artwork, Public Art Collection of Contemporary Art (Frac Bretagne)
Saint-Carré, 1991, photographs on porcelain, photographs silkscreened on enamelled sheet metal in rural village, inhabitants’ actions
Saint-Carré is a small Breton village in the Côtes d’Armor department. It has a small grocery store/bar, granite houses huddled around a chapel, a boules alley. One gets the impression of a traditional community. And yet it has seen the advent of industrial agriculture. Farmers are becoming more and more scarce, those who stay are adopting an industrial mode of farming, and the springs are polluted. Everyone’s work has become more independant, the traditional solidarity is observed to a lesser degree, even if the social ties are still holding out. One gets the impression of a traditional rural civilization that is dying. Saint-Carré is like a kind of in vivo postcard of the sixties. I spent some time with the villagers : talking and drinking coffee with them. I borrowed family photos from them, those that seemed to me to reveal, not the village’s history, but my idea of a community in a state of crisis. I transferred these photos, recentring them just a little, onto enamelled steel or porcelain sheets. I didn’t try to « paint a pretty picture » at all. The photos are plain, and it takes walking, surveying, immersing oneself in the milieu to discover them. The piece isn’t in the photos, but in the relationships between the photos, the people, and the place.
Saint-Carré is a small Breton village in the Côtes d’Armor department. It has a small grocery store/bar, granite houses huddled around a chapel, a boules alley. One gets the impression of a traditional community. And yet it has seen the advent of industrial agriculture. Farmers are becoming more and more scarce, those who stay are adopting an industrial mode of farming, and the springs are polluted. Everyone’s work has become more independant, the traditional solidarity is observed to a lesser degree, even if the social ties are still holding out. One gets the impression of a traditional rural civilization that is dying. Saint-Carré is like a kind of in vivo postcard of the sixties. I spent some time with the villagers : talking and drinking coffee with them. I borrowed family photos from them, those that seemed to me to reveal, not the village’s history, but my idea of a community in a state of crisis. I transferred these photos, recentring them just a little, onto enamelled steel or porcelain sheets. I didn’t try to « paint a pretty picture » at all. The photos are plain, and it takes walking, surveying, immersing oneself in the milieu to discover them. The piece isn’t in the photos, but in the relationships between the photos, the people, and the place.
