Entités naturelles

Artists and lecturers Arzhel Prioul and Mathieu Tremblin staged a workshop with 36 students from the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Strasbourg (ENSAS). Their subject was the artistic use of urban billposting, with the Völklingen Ironworks providing an allegory of a world after the withdrawal from fossil fuels. The workshop posed the following questions: What future might be envisaged for a post-industrial wasteland and ruin? And: Which useful ecosystems can be hosted by a UNESCO World Heritage Site?
The first workshop group developed a display on the subject of the “electrical circuit”. In five short stories, this offers different perspectives on the same place, provided by five “natural entities”: wind, fire, water, a bird and a tree. Each of these stories is like a narrative layer overlaying the previous one. And each of them narrates experience in three tenses – past, present and future – the aim being to lose track of time while reading.

Jeanette Dittmar