Project 2: Defacement

THEME:

Paris wears many scars of centuries of social and political conflict. Citizens and rulers have intervened in the cityscape over centuries to make major physical and architectural transformations that are central to its revolutionary spirit. Taking La Villette as a case study (reading Bataille and Hollier), this project explores the performative and symbolic that role acts of destruction, violence and erasure have played in the city’s spaces. It looks into the future from the past: the first and second French revolution to Baron Haussmann’s radical renovations, from the upheavals of 1968 to the current anti government and climate protests as well as Gilets Jaunes movements, and into the future, to inquire whether performing defacement is not only a negative but also a positive force, as in the “Labor of the Negative” (Taussig).

BRIEF:

Create a body of work that documents, interprets or re enacts an instance or a material form of

physical erasure in response to a specific Parisian urban scape or social dynamic. It can be based on traces you locate in the city of historic events, or examine the evidence of one of the social resistance or revolutionary movements or a political act of control via destruction. This will require you to examine the material and aesthetics of Paris. Your work can also study past traces of defacement in the built environment or it might imagine alternatives for the future of Paris. Your project may be fictional (past, present, future), or it can cite a real life event, based on documentary material, or a combination of any of the above.

THROUGH THE ASSESSABLE TASK STUDENTS WILL:

1) have a strong grasp of the city

as a material, finding form for a new iteration of revolution

and change;

2) be able to think on both a material and conceptual level about the entwined

relationship of aesthetics, politics, space and the fabric of the city; 3) develop new skills to

resolve difficult or abstract concepts through collaborative place based experimentation,

documentation, research and writing.

The Cent Quatre history of the building:

In 1870, the Archbishop of Paris, responsible for city burials, established a funeral service on a site known as les Petits Noyers. He ordered the construction of a new building on the site, covering an area of 26,000m², alongside the railtracks leading to the Gare de l’Est, between the rue des Vertus (now the rue d’Aubervilliers) and the rue Curial.[1]

In 1874, after two years of work, the building was inaugurated. It was the work of the architects Édouard Delebarre de Bay[2] and Godon, under the supervision of Victor Baltard, chief architect of Paris. The building was conceived in the style of the industrial architecture of the time (that of large train stations and exhibition halls),and constructed around a cast-iron frame using glass and brick. The surface area of the building was the same as the Place de la République. It consisted on two large canopied halls, loading bays, areas, stables and cellars, and was over 270m long.

For over 120 years, the building housed the city undertakers for Paris. Over 1,000 people worked in the building, organising 150 funeral processions per day. The main hall on the rue d’Aubervilliers was used for the preparation of coffins and catafalques. The second, on the rue de Curial housed 80 hearses and around 100 funeral chariots on the ground floor and 300 horses in 28 stables in the basement, where over 6,000 coffins were also stored, along with horse-feed and a 50,000-litre water tank.The halls also contained a group of twelve shops offering funeral ornaments as well as workshops for carpentry, tapestry, painting and upholstery.

In 1905, following the separation of church and state in France, funeral services were taken on by the municipality. During the 20th century, the building reached the height of its activity, with 1,400 people working there (almost all men, with only around 40 women).

After World War II, funeral services became motorised and the hall on the rue Curial became a garage for 150 vans and 92 saloon cars, along with their workshops and mechanics. The building had no mortuary, and did not house bodies except during World War II, the First Indochina War and the Algerian War, when it received the repatriated bodies of soldiers. In May 1968, the undertakers did not strike, but self-managed for a month.

The public sector monopoly over funeral services ended in 1993, and activity at the site declined to such an extent that it was closed in 1998. The building has been registered as a historic monument since 21 January 1997. The Mayor of Paris placed the building within an urban renewal project in order to protect and restore it.

Who are they now?

Infinite place of art, culture and innovation

Located in the 19th arrondissement, the CENTQUATRE-PARIS is a space for residencies, production and promotion for the public and artists from all over the world. Conceived by its director José-Manuel Gonçalvès as a collaborative artistic platform, it enables access to all of today’s arts, through a programme that is resolutely popular, contemporary and challenging. As an atypical living area lined with shops, it also offers spaces for free artistic practice and spaces for infants. For the start-ups that are part of its business accelerator, it forms a unique territory for experimentation, at the crossroads of art and innovation.

Keywords:

Family awakening to art

Art for all, in a free spirit

Launching start-ups

Cultivating well-being

Activities

Artists of all disciplines are invited to work in studios on site, allowing the public to view their work in production. The Cent Quatre regularly presents contemporary art exhibitions and has become one of the meeting places of the parisian youth for urban dances and other artistic or audiovisual activities. It also operates as a business incubator for social and cultural enterprises which it seeks to integrate with the artistic life of the building. The building is situated close to relatively deprived areas of Paris and runs community engagement activities and work experience programmes.

The Cent Quatre is part of a European network of similar projects. These include: RadialSystem V, a music and dance centre based in a former electricity sub-station in Berlin; Zone Attive, an arts centre opened in a former abattoir in Rome in 2008; Matadero Madrid, an arts centre also based in a former abattoir.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUXih3I4KgQ&feature=youtu.be

Idea:

An experimental video of overlayed sounds and images showing the 2 sides (past and present), the defacement of the Cent Quatre and how they connect through the space. On one hand religion, death and sinister immobility. On the other hand, movement, life and free expression. The old dark vs the new innovation.