Regards d’Artistes sur l’Urbanisme #6
TO6, Chaufferie de l’Union - Tourcoing, Hauts de France - France
R.A.U. is a creative residency program initiated by Groupe A - Coopérative culturelle and Ville Renouvelée. Every year, since 2015, 6 to 8 artists are invited to an in situ research-creation residency. They research the main urban projects developed by Ville Renouvelpee and propose their visions of current or past urban metamorphoses.
The works produced in close connection with the issues at hand in urban developments are brought together in an exhibition that closes each edition of the program. Regularly, the approaches developed by artists meet directly with the dynamics of developments and works are installed in public space, whether ephemerally or permanently.
The R.A.U program accompanies Ville Renouvelée in its desire to make the city an experience of coexistence, where functionalities in movement constitute the urban structure, its future, its transformations and its aesthetics. At the same time, Groupe A - Cooperative culturelle invests in abandoned sites in collaboration with Ville Renouvelée, to initiate cultural actions in neighborhoods in the process of becoming and operating transitions of use. For this edition of the residency program Regards d’Artiste sur l’urbanisme #6, the fields of investigation were as follows: (...) - the Quadrilatère des Piscines (Tourcoing) for Ana Alves and Eduardo Hargreaves.
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Not a child's toy
The snow globe is one of the most kitschy objects in the global tourism economy, and some aficionados collect them and proudly display their finds. The reproductions of the buildings in the pool quadrangle, enclosed in their plastic globes and covered in brick dust when handled, take us to a dimension that is even more humorous because we are not dealing here with historical or tourist monuments, but with buildings that have ended. to get off the ground and are completely reconfiguring the district. Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem revertis [“Remember man, you are dust and to dust you will return”]. This famous Latin phrase, used in all forms, could perfectly subtitle the work, emphasizing the banality of demolitions and reconstructions that transform cities. But it can also bring these miniatures dangerously close to home, imposing the same sentence on them in the end, and reducing our habitats to a few lost relics, among others, in the dumps of triumphant consumerism.
Pascal Marquilly
Not a child’s toy, 2021, variable dimensions, laser cutting and engraving, 3D printing, snow globe, brick dust, glycerin and water.
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Because everything is built on sand
Eduardo Hargreaves weaves a network of plastic correspondences between the supporting pillars of buildings undergoing renovation and the mesh of different fabrics, between the lines of force of an urban development plan and those of detailed drawings in charcoal and brick dust. This installation includes a symbolic representation of the tensions inherent in the overlapping of the different entities that constitute a territory, and which in one way or another preside over its transfiguration. It is a question of social struggles and capitalist exploitation as much as the positioning of culture, participating in the economic and political upheavals that, over time, constrain or liberate spaces. It is also a question of a suspended time, which balances between an industrial past undeniably inscribed in the city of Tourcoing and the appearance of new districts that have been completely redefined, turning resolutely towards a renewal of the city. This raises the question of who of what is capable of sustaining anything.
Pascal Marquilly
Because everything is built on sand, 2021, variable dimensions (~550 x 400 x 150cm), mixed supports, mixed materials (charcoal drawings, brick dust, city maps, punched cards, lace, various fabrics...).
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Works produced during a research and creation residency in the Quadrilatère des Piscines district in August - September 2021: Curated by Pascal Marquilly and Luiz Gustavo Carvalho. A production by Groupe A - Coopérative culturelle. Funding: Région Hauts-de-France, Sem Ville Renouvelée, PIC Union. Photo credits: Yves Bercez and Eduardo Hargreaves.
