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Parties prenantes 4·: Swimming Backwards

20th - 31th July 2010

The students from master ’Public Art and New Artistic Strategies’of the Bauhaus University in Weimar

This project aims at looking at neighbourhoods in transformation and asks what role artists can play in such processes of urban development. The students will explore the 13th district together, meet with inhabitants, organizations, employees, shopkeepers and students. These meetings will be the basis for the students to develop small, spontaneous, temporary interventions in public space. In doing this, the students temporarily intervene and take part in the „writing“ of this district and show their culturally-shaped perception of urban developments in this area of the city.

http://www.blogg.org/blog-68480-billet-swimming_backwards_workshop-1229156.html

http://www.betonsalon.net/spip.php?article259

Samedi 31 juillet de 16h à 20h / Saturday 31 July from 4pm to 8pm
Compte-rendu du workshop "Swimming Backwards" / Presentation of workshop "Swimming Backwards"

Réalisé avec 13 étudiants de l'université du Bauhaus de Weimar (Allemagne) du 21 au 30 juillet 2010.
With 13 students of the Bauhaus-University of Weimar (Germany) from 21 to 30 July 2010.

13 students from the Master-of-Fine-Arts Program "Public Art and New Artistic Strategies“ of the Bauhaus-University Weimar in Germany present the outcome of their working process in the area of the 13th district which is currently undergoing reconstruction and gentrification. Invited by the Betonsalon to research and react on the neighbourhood surrounding the artspace, students from Colombia, China, Germany, Greece, Holland, Ireland, Mexico, Israel, Austria, Taiwan and the United States explored this newly constructed part of the city for 10 days. Through a series of temporary interventions the students met with inhabitants, investigated aspects of public health and interacted with their surroundings. Their works reflect upon the urban developments in this area of the city, on a multiplicity of viewpoints and changing macro and microscopic perspectives.

Focusing on diverse signs and typefaces that surround the district Yvonne Morales (Mexico) created an open archive using photography as a collecting method, making a collection of the visual language for the Bétonsalon and for the people of the neighborhood.

Sally Lee (Hong Kong/ Canada) collected mundane cultural practices, which commonly used in previous generations have gradually become lost among todays youth. Through engaging in conversations with people of different ages in the 13th district’s Chinatown, she searched for their knowledge of household tips to turn them into a card game of home remedies as a way to continue these practices.

Jan Uprichard (Northern Ireland) recreated the smell of the area around the Betonsalon through a process of smell mapping, challenging people to think about the landscape in terms of smell as opposed to vision.

As the basis for her work Xinglang Guo (China) triggers communication with local people, trying to understand their relationship to this micro community.

Juan G. Caicedo D. (Colombia) is also interested in the existing micro communities but approached it on another level: He attempted to make a landmark out of himself by sitting in a bar and trying to get strangers to ‘talk’ with him. As he does not speak French he used a white paper pad as the sole means of communication between him and the bar’s regulars and newcomers. It is the vessel of conversation, a graphic journal, and documentation of the work.

Rosa van Goudoever (Holland) also documented a process where she spread a photograph of herself around the neighbourhood in order to start a series of events that happen by accident.

Ben Craig (Northern Ireland) visualised his interpretation of the architecture in the 13th district, whereas Olivia Jaques (Austria) worked with the process of mapping the architectural and social structures of the area by observing people, how they react to these structures and the organic layers they create as a result.

Anthony Antonellis (USA) focussed on the skaters meeting outside the Betonsalon, asking them to attach a fluorescent sticker to the bottom of their skateboards to be scratched off while skating. Through this process the painted square gets torn and dissolves into it´s original surrounding.

Johannes Abendroth (Germany) and Juan G. Caicedo D. (Colombia) question the impact of urban functionality which is present in the heritage of Modernism: reflecting on the newly developed residential area in the 13th district which is supposed to follow contemporary conceptions of urban planning, they visualized a quote of Le Corbusier’s urban theories: "La rue courbe est le chemin des ânes, la rue droite le chemin des Hommes." (The curved street is the way of the donkeys, the straight street the way of man.) by navigating through the city dressed as a donkey.

Artist Li-Shih Chen (Taiwan) has nine years of experience working as a pharmacist. At a pharmancy in the 13th district Chen engaged in research asking people about their perspectives of public space to find out their needs in relation to environmental health, as living surroundings are important to people's health and quality of life.

Angeliki Makri (Greece) aimed to create a kind of obituary for a specific place in the neighbourhood by attaching a frame around an existing announcement of demolition of a building on Rue de Chevaleret. This street is known as a border dividing the old and the newly constructed parts of this district.

Alma Alloro (Israel) invites us to listen to her song "Next Summer Hit", which she promoted on the streets of the 13th district through a radio station broadcast.

Swimming Backwards was taught as a Professionalization Module in the Master-of-Fine-Arts Program "Public Art and New Artistic Strategies" at the Bauhaus-University Weimar by Constanze Fritzsch and Nadin Reschke.

Bétonsalon bénéficie du soutien de/is supported by: la Ville de Paris, Université Paris 7 – Denis Diderot, Département de Paris, DRAC Ile-de-France - Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, Conseil régional d’Ile-de-France, Hiscox et Leroy Merlin (Ivry/Seine).

Partenaires de /Partners of Swimming Backwards
Deutsch-Französische Kulturstiftung

Bétonsalon est membre de tram, réseau art contemporain Paris /Île-de-France/ Bétonsalon is a member of tram, network for contemporary art in Paris /Île-de-France