On Saturday, September 30, 1967, Robert Smithson, equipped with his Kodak Instamatic, a science fiction book in hand, takes a bus to New York and gets off at Passaic, New Jersey. It will emerge from this stroll a founding text for all walking artists and beyond, “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic”, a veritable manifesto of an a esthetic re-evaluation of the landscape, published in the magazine Artforum with photographs captioned and a map. Exactly 50 years apart, Saturday, September 30, 2017, artists, authors, architects, admirers of Smithson, whoever they are, in diverse urban interstices throughout the world, play a reactivation of Robert Smithson’s journey.

During your wandering, you will pay attention to the alterations of space and time, you will strive to open your perception of the time through the place, you will measure with modesty, sadness or nostalgia perhaps, but without terror the irreversibility of the human occupation of the soil. You will simply wonder how you can live in the ruins of your time and what the monuments contemplated on that day, Saturday September 30, 2017, teach you in this matter.

 

— Matthieu Duperrex, artistic director

This is a tribute, simple and modest, without outrageous form of publicity. It is an almost solitary act but connected to a community of experience. It is an opportunity for everyone who participates in this reactivation to experience with a singular intensity the ruins of our modern world, to cross the entropic landscape and to make an appointment with our future which, as Smithson writes, “is lost somewhere in the dumps of the nonhistorical past”.

Artists will produce narratives of their Visit to the Monuments, including photographs (or drawings) and their captions.

For the publication of the book Tribute to Passaic (bilingual English / French), the artistic collective Urbain, trop urbain associates with the Autrechose publisher, directed by the artist Quentin Jouret.

Please let us know by email if you would be interested by a copy of the book!

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Reenactments done Saturday, September 30, 2017

 

Amsterdam, Netherlands

David Habets

Location of the monuments: 52.389690, 4.892799

The walker
David Habets has a background in applied physics and landscape architecture. During the last years he has been working as a freelance researcher and architect at TNO (former National Dutch research institute) working on new materials and the AMC (Amsterdam Medical Centre) in Amsterdam. In addition to this David has been intensively involved in many projects at RAAAF [Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affordances] from 2011 – 2016 developing artistic research and architectural installations [Deltawork 1:1 –  Breaking Habits – Trusted Strangers]. Combining professional fields David is interested in the embodiment of our thoughts, work and habits in our living environment – our landscapes. Investigating inter-scalar societal issues through spatial research, animation and architectural prototypes.

Barcelona, Spain

dpr-barcelona (Ethel Baraona Pohl & César Reyes Nájera)

Location of the monuments: unknown

The walkers
dpr-barcelona is an architectural research practice based in Barcelona, dealing with three main lines: publishing, criticism and curating. Their work explore how architecture as discipline reacts in the intersection with politics, technology, economy and social issues. Their publications, both digital and printed, transcend the boundaries of conventional publications, approaching to those which are probably the titles of architecture in the future, exploring the limits between printed matters and new media, transforming traditional publishing practice [as we know it] into a live exchange of knowledge. Their [net]work is a real hub linking several publications and actors on architecture and theory. www.dpr-barcelona.com

Berlin, Germany

Elise Hunchuck

Location of the monuments: 52.484175, 13.371688

The walker
Elise Hunchuck is a researcher and designer with degrees in landscape architecture, philosophy, and geography whose work focuses on bringing together fieldwork and design through collaborative practice. Facilitating multidisciplinary exchanges between representational methods as a way to further develop landscape-oriented research methodologies, her research develops cartographic, photographic, and text-based practices, communicating the agency of material and disasters. www.elisehunchuck.com 

Edinburgh, Scotland

Mark Dorrian

Location of the monuments: unknown

The walker
Mark Dorrian holds the Forbes Chair in Architecture at the University of Edinburgh and co-directs Metis, an atelier for art, architecture and urbanism. His work spans topics in architecture and urbanism, art history and theory, and media studies and has appeared in publications such as Cabinet, Chora, Cultural Politics, the Journal of Architecture, the Journal of Narrative Theory, Log, Parallax, Radical Philosophy, and Word & Image. Mark’s recent books include Seeing From Above: The Aerial View in Visual Culture (co-edited with Frédéric Pousin [2013]) and a volume of collected essays titled Writing On The Image: Architecture, the City and the Politics of Representation (2015). He has been a visiting professor at the Arkitektskolen Aarhus (Denmark), University of Michigan (USA), and Tianjin University (China), and a visiting scholar at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal.

Genova, Italy

Emanuele Piccardo

Location of the monuments: 44.350753, 9.231335

The walker
Emanuele Piccardo is an architecture historian, photographer and filmmaker. In 2013 he realized the research called Beyond Environment about the relationship between art-architecture-nature through the works of Gianni Pettena, Allan Kaprow, Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark. Piccardo visited Spiral Jetty in 2014. In 2016 with Stalker he photographed the site of Asphalt Rundown in Rome, like an homage to Smithson. In 2013 he won the Graham Foundation Grant. www.archphoto.it & www.plugin-lab.it 

Graz, Austria

Christoph Walter Pirker

Location of the monuments: 47.541439, 14.888427

The walker
Christoph Walter Pirker is an architect, performance artist, writer, and musician. As Assistant professor at the Institute for Architecture and Landscape at the Graz University of Technology (Austria) he is unfolding contemporary landscapes, environments, and ecologies. Currently, he is working on his PhD thesis (supervised by artist Milica Tomić) entitled “Visual ontologies of the indefinite – Scores of a new spatial construction.” His research focus lies on the development of performative approaches to spaces of warfare, politics, and ideology, the investigation of the human and the non-human in architecture, and the re-definition of the visual. www.studiobirkenblau.com 

Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Christopher DeWolf

Location of the monuments: 22.339336, 114.204221

The walker
Christopher DeWolf is the author of Borrowed Spaces: Between the Cracks of Modern Hong Kong. He writes about urbanism, architecture, design and culture for magazines and newspapers around the world. He is the founding editor of Urbanphoto, a famous blog about cities, people and place. www.urbanphoto.net/blog/ 

Incheon, South Korea

Trojan Tactics (Gemini Kim & Sébastien Mazauric)

Location of the monuments: unknown

The walkers
Trojan Tactics is composed by Gemini Kim (kr) + Sébastien Mazauric (fr) + Viktor Vejvoda (cz). Born in Berlin in 2015, TT is experimenting collectivity and phantasies. Creating third-places, random walks and parties, they are assuming improvisation and a state of permanent transformation. www.groundhood.com & http://trojantactics.tumblr.com 

Istanbul, Turkey

Nazlı Tümerdem

Location of the monuments: 41.212959, 29.109934

The walkers
Nazlı Tümerdem is an architect from Istanbul. Currently, she is continuing her PhD in Istanbul Technical University for which she walks around northern Istanbul. These walks are recorded as #IstanbulWalkabouts through multiple media:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSbqcDUcVBeDoXhpq5kqghg & https://twitter.com/IST_walkabouts?lang=en

Igor Medarić is an archaeologist and a musician from Slovenia. He is finishing his PhD at the University of Ljubljana.

La Paz, Bolivia

Jessica Biermann-Grunstein

Location of the monuments: -16.489847, -68.209090

The walker
Jessica Biermann-Grunstein est auteure de poésie plastique, aussi bien littéraire que picturale. Elle vit et travaille en Bolivie. https://jessicabiermanngrunstein.wordpress.com 

Lausanne, Switzerland

Leo Fabrizio 

Location of the monuments: 46.526104, 6.679939

The walker
Artiste indépendant, Leo Fabrizio est un bâtisseur d’images. La photographie est pour lui un outil de connaissance. Ses images ont une structure, une histoire, un propos, une âme. L’ensemble qu’elles constituent est un corpus cohérent dans lequel on peut in fine déambuler et habiter. Ce que les matériaux, les formes et la lumière sont pour l’architecte, Leo Fabrizio le fait pour la photographie. Ainsi, il nous redonne à voir le Monde comme une Architecture, c’est à dire comme une réalité à la fois tangible mais également miroir de nos imaginaires intérieurs. Publications monographiques : Bunkers (éditions Infolio 2004) et Dreamworld (édition JRP|Ringier 2010). www.leofabrizio.com 

London, England

Corinna Dean

Location of the monuments: 51.691664, 0.009667

The walker
Corinna Dean established the Archive for Rural Contemporary Architecture, ARCA in 2014, which explores rural building typologies on an open source platform, www.arca-projects.com Her work explores through writing/collecting and archiving architecture and strife, inhabitation and representations of the city. Her research has taken her to locations such as Lebanon, Cameroon and India. She is exploring cultural readings of public space with the Kochi-Muziri Biennale, India.

Marseille, France

Hendrik Sturm

Location of the monuments: 43.308513, 5.375556

The walker
Hendrik Sturm est sculpteur, neurobiologiste, enseignant, promeneur.

Melbourne, Australia

Charity Edwards

Location of the monuments: -37.8144444, 144.90944439999998

The walker
Charity Edwards is an architect, urban researcher, and lecturer at Monash University Art Design and Architecture (Melbourne, Australia). With over 15 years of experience, Charity collaborates with other spatial practitioners to create interiors, buildings and landscapes in Australia and the Asia-Pacific. Her current research focuses on the relationship between the ocean, urbanisation, and representations of planetary change; and she is currently undertaking a PhD in Urban Planning on geo-imaginaries of the Southern Ocean. Charity also teaches design studio and contemporary theory in Interior Architecture, and urban processes in Architecture; with a specific focus on interdisciplinary concerns involving media and more-than-human experiences.

Montréal, Canada

Nicolas Nova

Location of the monuments: 45.557078, -73.551077

The walker
Nicolas Nova is co-founder of the Near Future Laboratory, a research agency based in Europe and California, and Associate Professor at the Geneva School of Arts and Design  (HEAD – Genève). His work lies at the intersection of ethnography, interaction design and futures research, with a particular interest in ubiquitous and mobile technologies and the cultural practices surrounding new media. He is interested in observing and documenting digital and new media practices, as well as creating design fictions, i.e. speculative designed objects exploring the experiences of near future. www.nicolasnova.net 

Nantes, France

Anthony Poiraudeau

Location of the monuments: 47.207273, -1.549177

The walker
Anthony Poiraudeau est né en 1978 à La Roche-sur-Yon et il vit à Nantes. Il est membre du comité de rédaction de la revue littéraire La moitié du fourbi, tient le blog futiles et graves et contribue occasionnellement au site internet de création littéraire remue.net et à la revue 303. Son premier livre Projet el Pocero, à propos d’une ville fantôme espagnole, a été publié en 2013 par les éditions Inculte. Son deuxième livre, intitulé Churchill, Manitoba, parait en octobre 2017 chez le même éditeur. http://futilesetgraves.blogspot.fr 

Napoli, Italy

Claire Dutrait

Location of the monuments: 40.871190, 14.127542

The walker
Co-fondatrice de la plateforme éditoriale Urbain, trop urbain, Claire Dutrait écrit, comme elle aime le dire, de la poésie documentée. Une façon pour elle de saisir ce que fait au langage notre entrée dans l’ère de l’anthropocène. Ses réalisations sont tour à tour collectives et personnelles, sur papier, en numérique, en performances ou en expositions. Parutions : Shanghai Nø City Guide (Urbain, trop urbain, 2012), Micromegapolis (Urbain, trop urbain, 2013), Périphérique intérieur, (WildProject, 2014). À paraître : Aujourd’hui Eurydice, (Publie.net 2018). www.zoneclaire.fr 

New Orleans, USA

Miriam Arkin

Location of the monuments: 29.349323, -89.537260

The walker
Miriam Arkin, flâneuse, ouvre des huitres et des paysages.

New Orleans, USA

Jan Gilbert & Kevin McCaffrey

Location of the monuments: 30.026667, -90.082974

The walkers
Native New Orleanian Jan Gilbert (www.jangilbertart.com) is an inter-disciplinary artist, curator and educator. Her works mine memory, loss and transition and have been shown widely in galleries, museums, cultural centers and often as public art on city streets across the United States and abroad. Gilbert is a cofounder of the artist/writer collaborative The VESTIGES Project (www.thevestigesproject.org). Throughout her tenure of 35+ years with VESTIGES, she directed, produced, and participated as a core artist in a wide variety of collaborative public art projects that include video, performance and site interactions. Post Katrina, the collective spent three years working under the auspices of a roving residency with New Orleans’ Contemporary Arts Center, where she more recently served as Interim Visual Arts Director. Gilbert is currently guest curating a New Orleans tricentennial exhibition ART OF THE CITY: Post Modern to Post Katrina in collaboration with The Historic New Orleans Collection. Three of Gilbert’s art installations are part of an international art route in Northern Holland Christmas Flood 1717 ~ 2017, marking 300 years since the largest natural disaster to strike the Netherlands in the last four centuries. http://www.kerstvloed1717.nl/en/1717-christmas-flood |

Kevin McCaffrey is an award winning filmmaker, writer, editor, and oral historian. His interests primarily focus on culture, history, arts, culinary history, Louisiana cultures and the environment. He has created documentaries for broadcast television, clients, exhibits, and online and which have also been screened in several film festivals. His articles and columns have appeared in local and national magazines and newspapers and he produced a book on the history of the New Orleans Jazz Fest. He is a member of the Louisiana Folklife Commission and has been awarded grants and fellowships including a Monroe Fellowship at Tulane University studying Jazz history, Visiting Scholar at Newcomb College, and is a Fellow of the Loyola University Institute for Environmental Communication. His food culture documentaries, We Live To Eat (New Orleans culinary history), was a finalist for a national James Beard Award and No One Ever Went Hungry (Cajun Food Culture) was Louisiana Humanities Documentary of The Year. His current projects are not only the Traditional Jazz content for “A Closer Walk,” a music tour app for radio station WWOZ; documentation work for the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation as well as the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Archive. He is also pursuing fund raising for a documentary recounting the Birth of Jazz in New Orleans as well as culinary culture and history projects.

Oslo, Norway

Stine Alling Jacobsen

Location of the monuments: 59.547640, 10.567762.

The walker
Stine Alling Jacobsen holds a BA in Scandinavian Studies and Visual Culture from University of Southern Denmark and an MA in Research Architecture from Goldsmiths, University of London and is currently doing a PhD at the Department of Cultural Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo as a part of the project Geological Times: Geology and New Regimes of Historicity. Her PhD project is an extension of her MA project and deals with geological mapping and mineral extraction in Greenland. The project is situated within the framework of the colonial history between Denmark and Greenland, questions about the Anthropocene and the power of visualization in science and technology. Stine is involved in a number of practice based research projects including exploring the artistic potentials of eye tracking technology in relation to scientific imagery connected to Greenland.

Paris, France

Eric Tabuchi & Nelly Monnier

Location of the monuments: 48.730961, 2.240389

The walkers
Après des études de sociologie où il découvre l’oeuvre d’August Sanders, Eric Tabuchi commence son travail photographique. En 1999, en compagnie d’autres artistes, il fonde à Paris le collectif Glassbox avec qui il participe à de nombreuses expositions. À partir de 2007, Eric Tabuchi publie plusieurs livres – Hyper Trophy, Twentysix abandoned gazoline stations, Alphabet truck – chez Florence Loewy. Il expose notamment au Palais de Tokyo, au Confort Moderne et au Abattoirs. Depuis 2012, il travaille à l’élaboration d’Atlas of Forms – www.atlas-of-forms.net. En 2017, il commence l’Atlas des Régions Naturelles, projet qu’il entend mener ces prochaines années. Né d’un père japonais et d’une mère danoise, son travail s’articule autour des notions de territoire, de mémoire et d’identité. Les typologies architecturales constituent le principal de son œuvre. En plus de sa pratique photographique, Eric Tabuchi produit des objets et réalise des installations. www.erictabuchi.net |

Après une enfance rurale, des études de cinéma à Bourg-en-Bresse et des voyages en Europe de l’Est, Nelly Monnier obtient un DNSEP à l’ENSBA-Lyon en 2012. Elle présente ensuite son travail, où peinture, dessin et récit abordent les rapports entre architecture, loisirs et paysage, à la Galleria Moitre (Turin), au Creux de l’enfer (Thiers), au musée Fabre de Montpellier suite à l’obtention du prix Félix Sabatier, à l’Institut d’Art Contemporain de Lyon/ Villeurbanne en 2013, puis à Singapour et Allevard-les-bains en 2015 et en galerie à Paris et Toulouse dernièrement. En 2014, elle entame des collaborations : avec Eric tabuchi dans le cadre d’Utopark, Distopark puis pour l’Atlas des Régions Naturelles ; avec Gaëlle Delort dans un inventaire photographique intitulé Secteur Lambda ; avec Hélène Paris sous forme de correspondances dessinées présentées à Reims et à Paris. www.nellymonnier.com & www.arn-journal.tumblr.com 

Potsdam, Germany

Viktor Vejvoda (Trojan Tactics)

Location of the monuments: 52.413513, 13.090159

The walker
Viktor Vejvoda is experimenting with peripheral situations and position of Artist, doing Ø budget projects and Art works production, looking for emancipation through tools possession and materials extravagant play. Trojan Tactics is an artist collective composed by Gemini Kim (kr), Sébastien Mazauric (fr) & Viktor Vejvoda (cz). Viktor Vejvoda is the coauthor of Via Baltica (2006) and published many art projects. See utopia.comlu.com & vimeo.com/user4966699 & homeiswheretrashis.tumblr.com & amsterdaminiso.tumblr.com & trojantactics.tumblr.com 

Plouézoc’h, France

Catherine Rannou

Location of the monuments: unknown

The walker
Artiste et architecte de formation, Catherine Rannou collabore régulièrement avec des équipes de scientifiques, d’artistes, d’architectes et d’habitants travaillant autour des questions environnementales et sociales. La restitution de son travail prend la forme de comptes-rendus de ce qui se passe ailleurs, en dehors du lieu d’exposition, en dehors de l’atelier. Ils se formalisent au sein d’installations mettant en relation aussi bien des vidéos, que des photos, des dessins, des cartes manuscrites, des maquettes etc. provenant de la collecte effectuée in situ. Catherine Rannou expose régulièrement en France et à l’étranger, notamment au Quartier, centre d’art contemporain de Quimper ; au centre d’art passerelle, Brest ; à la Criée à Rennes ; à la Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris, au FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais, au festival EV+A à Limerick, Irlande ; à la Galerie Kunstraum Kreuzlingen, Suisse ; à la Verbeke Foundation, Kemzeke, Belgique… http://catherine-rannou.fr 

Roma, Italy

Stalker

Location of the monuments: unknown

The walkers
Stalker is a collective subject that engages research and actions within the landscape with particular attention to the areas around the city’s margins and forgotten urban space, and abandoned areas or regions under transformation. In 2002, Stalker founded the research network Osservatorio Nomade, which consists of architects, artists, activists and researchers working experimentally and engaging in actions to create self-organised spaces and situations. www.osservatorionomade.net/ 

San Francisco, USA

Richard Hindle

Location of the monuments: 37.807549, -122.335694

The walker
Richard L. Hindle is an assistant professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. His current research explores the geographical dimensions of patent innovation, and how technology has transformed complex environmental systems such as rivers, coasts, and cities. He also works as a designer and consultant on architectural projects that integrate living plants with buildings systems. Richard is an surfer who studies the coastal edge, and ponders the beaches of the future.

Shanghai, China

Xiaoling Fang

Location of the monuments: 31.121219, 121.432398

The walker
Xiaoling Fang est architecte paysagiste. Elle est chercheuse invitée de Key Laboratory of New Technology for Construction of Cities in Mountain Area Chongqing University, membre de l’unité de recherche AMP- UMR LAVUE 7218 CNRS, membre de l’association LABCF « Laboratoire de l’Art de Bâtir Chine/France ». Ses thèmes de recherche sont la créativité, la formation du concepteur, le paysage et l’architecture vernaculaire.

Toronto, Canada

Jill Price

Location of the monuments: 48.84525180081516, -66.02443879999994

The walker
Jill Price is a professional artist, curator and educator living near Toronto, Ontario. Working within the critical discourse of landscape theory, network theory and OOO, Price’s practice locates and analyzes the political, economic, social and environmental shadows of material culture. Working with data visualization as a framework, Price’s current research focuses on the shadows of the global textile industry and how the excess waste and shadows of that waste have become lively unsanctioned architects of earth’s geography and geology. Sharing agency with employed fabrics during the drawing and assemblage process, Price utilizes different indexical modes of recording to arrive at narratives that communicate how humans, objects and land are all part of the material cycle. www.jillpricestudios.ca 

Yagisawa, Japan

Yoann Moreau

Location of the monuments: 34.979439, 138.951001

The walker
Après des études de sciences-physiques, Yoann Moreau a réalisé une ethnographie sur pilotis en Amazonie brésilienne, parue sous le titre Vivre dans la fluctuance (Tel Quel, 2002). Il a ensuite côtoyé les SDF de Tokyo et entamé une étude comparé des sociétés humaines en situation de déprise, c’est-à-dire placée dans l’impossibilité de maîtriser ce qui les environne. Ce fut l’objet de sa thèse de doctorat, publiée sous le titre Vivre avec les catastrophes (PUF, 2017). Depuis 2010 il est dramaturge au sein d’une Cie de théâtre avec laquelle il met en travail la question des catastrophes « spectraculaires ». S’y déclinent en autant de pièces les questions de la modernité rurale, des accidents nucléaires, de l’obésité, du changement climatique, de la dépression et de l’humain négatif. Depuis 2016 il est maître-assistant en anthropologie au Centre de recherches sur les Risques et les Crises (CRC) à Mines ParisTech.

 

Monuments of Passaic