. . . Chemin de fer(s) . . .
BaO took part for the second consecutive year in Chalon dans la rue, an important urban art festival in Chalon-sur-Saône. Working with the artist Xavier Juillot on the old industrial harbor, we reactivate the so-called derelict urban infrastructure and its gigantic tools in order to subvert their meaning. Chemin de fer(s) translating as both "steel path" and "railway" in french, is a reinforced installation that utilized on-site materials and imaginaire to reconstruct an alternative landscape. The project wasn't planned or drawn, it was a hands on experiment where we don't build by designing but "design" by building.
:: Re-build ::
The railways that were irrigating the harbor were being dismantled and the concrete enclosure we were working in was filling day by day by the dismantled wood sleepers. The railways sleepers amassing on our site, consequence of the demolition of one of the "Chemin de fer", became the foundations of the new "Chemin de Fer(s)" under construction. Above our site, the port's massive overhead crane used to transfer reinforcement rebars from delivering boats to the nearby steel factory. Millions of tones of steel used to transit just above our heads. The choregraphy of large scale machines kept feeding the factories and the city with ressources. The installation tries to reconstruct this flow/path of steel bridging the river and the city. The accidental encounter of both deconstructed "chemin de fer" on our site (terrestrial and the aerial) became the basis of the reinforced installation.
A kind of utterly unfunctionnal industrial revival was on the go. What was percieved as a residual abandonned space was suddently transformed into an active building site, a kind of alternative development questionning the planned dismantlement of the harbor. The public was invited to visit the construction site where mad men, against all odds, were frenetically re-building a large scale industrial reinforced landscape.
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