Urban Explorations Paris

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Come discover Urban Explorations Paris on display at Galerie Episodique, 1 rue des Nanettes (http://www.galerieepisodique.com).

Calendar / Calendrier: 

5 - 13 June, Monday - Saturday 10am - 1pm and 2pm - 6pm. 5 - 13 juin. Lundi - samedi 10h - 13h et 14h - 18h.

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And the exhibition is up. Opening night. 

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We made it, exhibition is open.

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Setup time.

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Tracks. Field trips and data collection completed.

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After 3 weeks of field trips, experimentation and inventions, the Urban Explorers have finally built their data collecting tools!

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Field trip preparations.

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Hands at work.

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Desktops.

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Weixin Chong was drawn to the impermanence of Paris. She witnessed how the passing of time continuously changes the landscape. From tiny natural debris, abandoned objects to dead animals, the city presented a story of time through the waste and unwanted. She began to think about collecting these elements to form sort of a museum of fallen, neglected, forgotten or discarded things. How they could represent a sort of era hidden beneath the activities of the bustling city. Just because they are small and seemingly insignificant does not mean they are insignificant. There is beauty and pertinence in everything.

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During his field trips, Ong Kian Peng was intrigued by the extensive tagging around the city and how it was limited to certain geo-cultural locations. He thought that it would be interesting to explore this phenomenon. But as he explored the city by train, it dawned on him that there was an extensive underground network in Paris. This prompted him to start thinking about the resonance and reverberations in them, and finally leading to the idea about listening to spaces and sound as data.

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Cindy Lin is invested in human and non-human interactions, engagement and politics. Her participation in UE Paris focuses her attention to her favourite non-human, slime mate – the snail. Her field trips are centered on both public and private parks; these parks are chosen from contrasting political, social and cultural sites in and outside of Paris. Attempting to elucidate how micro-”pests” can elucidate potential post-apocalyptic survival tools and ways of adapting to rapid urbanisation, this project hopes to focus on the greater interrelationships between species.

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Damien Valero studies three particular streets in the 11th arrondissement, each with its own peculiar personality. Avenue de la République which was a major avenue where many cars past, shops and civic services line the streets. Rue Oberkampf where it is very trendy with the renovation of new shops and buildings. Boulevard de Ménilmontant which has a quite a ghetto street vibe with graffiti, street markets, communal gatherings and urban music. These three streets are all within walking distance to all the necessities of urban living. Banks, supermarkets, bakeries, florists, flea markets, métro stations. People live within walking distance.

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In his field trips, Antoine Bonnet paid attention to the pigeon variety living in the Parisian urban landscape. He was fascinated by the way these birds have adapted in different parts of Paris. He noticed public nests built in several districts and considered how human activities were affecting or even changing the way these birds lived.

Regulated by state controlled urban houses, feeding times and breeding conditions, pigeon way of life have become the ultimate repressive state. Yet it does not appear to be consistent in the different neighbourhoods in Paris. The richer parts for example appear to have stricter controls while the pigeons appear to have more freedom in the less affluent parts of the city. Have pigeons become a litmus test for the social status of a neighbourhood?

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Andreas Schlegel is working on several small experiments and one project that focuses on creating a tool to measure and capture the movement of things. The smaller experiments revolve around my chance encounters in the city of paris that he captured with his mobile phone. On his first field trip, he noticed a group of tourist taking pictures of each other in front of the Centre Pompidou. Since then, he constantly realized that it was a commonplace phenomenon and just like a reflex, he had to take pictures of them. His archive of pictures of people taking pictures is slowly growing. Some observations from looking at this archive are that men appear to be vain when taking the perfect selfie, asians are creative in posing and even the photographer can be quite acrobatic in posture.

His main project is concerned with the movement of things. While exploring the Parisian landscape during his first field trips, he paid attention to potential objects which he could take samples from, this includes for example escalators, playgrounds, public transportation, water or trees.