Ces projets s'inscrivent dans le cadre de mon travail, qui comprend des œuvres obsessionnelles et temporelles se déroulant sur une période prédéfinie ou indéterminée (d'un an à plusieurs décennies). exemples:
Catalogue of vanishing things (1 object gathered each day for 1 year and kept, sealed forever, in 1.5ml cryotubes).
Numéros utiles (numéros de téléphone publicitaires trouvés dans ma boîte aux lettres sur une période d'un an, additionnés pour obtenir le numéro utile ultime).
Transport commun (un relevé de mes déplacements quotidiens en bus et métro (RATP ; Paris, France) en 2013. Le numéro de chaque ligne est indiqué pour chaque jour, ce qui donne un code. Ces codes sont additionnés pour obtenir un total à la fin de chaque mois. Le total pour l'année entière est indiqué ci-dessous et constitue une représentation numérique de mes déplacements. J'ai également représenté graphiquement mes déplacements dans les transports en commun parisiens pour chaque mois et pour l'année entière, ce qui peut être interprété comme un système circulatoire rudimentaire de mon année 2013.
Pain Proust (nourrir À la recherche du temps perdu de Marcel Proust, page par page aux oiseaux du Jardin du Luxembourg à Paris (2010-présent)
Catalogue of vanishing things
various locations, France, 2020-2021
1 object gathered each day
(01.02.2020 - 31.01.2021)
and kept, sealed forever,
in 1.5ml cryotubes
Presque rien, et bientôt, plus rien du tout
– Clément Rosset
Le projet A Catalogue of Vanishing Things a débuté le 1er février 2020. Pour ce projet, je souhaitais ajouter un élément de chaque journée dans un petit tube cryogénique, puis les sceller et les conserver à jamais comme archives d'une année. Le 1er février est le jour de mon arrivée en France (2008) et représente donc un nouveau départ, une nouvelle année. J'étais loin de me douter que l'année que j'avais choisie pour ce projet (2020) serait une année sans précédent (covid, deux confinements)! Chaque objet est noté par date et lieu dans un cahier.
A Catalogue of Vanishing Things began on 1 fevrier 2020. For this project I wished to add something from each day into a small cryogenic tube and then seal them and keep them forever as an archive of an entrie year. 1 feverier is the day I arrived in France (2008) and so represents a new begging, a new year. Little did I know that the year I had chosen for this project (2020) would be a year like none other (covid, 2 confinements). Each object is noted by date and location.
Numéros utiles
Paris, France 2017
telephone numbers from solicitors
found in my mailbox
over the period of one year,
added together to arrive at
the ultimate
numéro utile.
Transport Commun
(les rêveries d’un passager solitaire)
Paris, France 2013
Pour les gens éveilles, il n’existe qu’une monde, qui est commun,
alors que dans le sommeil chacun se détourne vers un monde qui lui est propre
— Héraclite
There is not an image more representative of the confinements and incivilities of daily life than that of commuters crushed together inside a bus. Travelling in cages with others, enslaved to tyrannical schedules, and personally culpable for every irregularity in a system that despises you- to take a bus, or a metro, is for many a calumny… and for those who have the freedom to choose other forms of submission to the quotidian, it is something unspeakably worse.
To live in contemporary society, within its grand cities, to persist within its unfathomable complexity and to find one's place amidst its interminable flux, to be familiar with its dehumanizing forces, its seductions that promise only frustration, and to the generalized insomnia that is central to its pathology, the question cannot fail to arise: how to resist?
How to remain human? How to sleep, how to dream... how to awaken, truly? Over time such questions lose their interrogative force. They becomes words on a wall we pass hundreds of times every week, words forced to kneel and beg for alms, words forced to sell what is not their own while at the same time renouncing their proper origin, their homeland— liberty.
How to resist… my strategy in Transport Commun, as it was in Pain Proust and in the Encyclodesiropedia, was to seize an element of our unbearable daily life, an element that is a part of our degradation, and then use it against itself. A moment I must endure, or even a moment I must simply pass, mindlessly, is thereby transformed into the material of a creative act. Repeating this act every day is sufficient to transform the world in a non-trivial way. Liberty opens its eyes, says hello, and asks your name… a true homecoming.
And homecoming is the repressed desire of every traveller and every worker and every vehicle and every road or rail line that, together, comprise our transport commun.
The following is a record of bus and metro trips (RATP; Paris, France) taken each day during 2013. The number of each bus and metro line is indicated for each day, resulting in a code. These codes are added together to give a sum at the end of each month. The total for the entire year is indicated below, and functions as a numerical representation of my passage through the year. I have also graphically represented my movements through the system of public transportation in Paris for each month and for the year in total, which can be interpreted as a rudimentary circulatory system of my year, 2013.
Rules (règles du jeu):
1. Every day for the entirety of 2013 note the number of each metro line (1-14) and each bus that I take. This produces a code for each day.
2. Add each daily code, giving a sum for each month.
3. Trace my route for each day on a map of Paris, therby producing a graphical representation of my movements for each month. see here
4. Add every daily code for the entire year. This grand total will represent all my movements in 2013. I will then use this code and devise an itinerary, the Ultimate Itinerary, based on correspondences dictated by the series of numbers
traces of travels for février, avril et mai
the traces of my daily use of the Parisian public transport system for 2013
the sum of all itineraries in 2013 is 136674269990609
I have considered this code to be an intinerary from which I devised the following series of correspondences... an Ultimate Itinerary, a final voyage, which encompasses, in some way, all of 2013.
I still have not yet found the courage to undertake this final voyage.
the Ultimate Itinerary
13
Gaité -> Montparnasse Bienvenue
6
Montparnasse Bienvenue -> Place d'Italie
67
Place d'Italie -> Carrefour du Chateaudun
42
Chateaudun - Lamartine -> Rapp - La Bourdonnais
69
Rapp - La Bourdonnais -> Voltaire - Léon Blum
9
Voltaire -> Robespierre
9
Robespierre -> Nation
6
Nation -> Trocadéro
9
Trocadéro -> Bonne Nouvelle