Programming
VLAN Paysages
Remblai-déblai
VLAN paysages continue son exploration des sites laissés au hasard des mutations de la ville, perçus comme autant de cases-mémoire urbaines qui conservent et dévoilent, par leur vide, des traces et des couches d'usage, des unités de paysages passées ou présentes.
Mémoire vive
Initiated by DARE-DARE in collaboration with the Centre d'histoire de Montréal, Mémoire Vive provided a framework for reflection that brought together artists and stakeholders in the heritage field.
For Mémoire vive, VLAN paysages continues its exploration of sites left to chance by the mutations of the city, perceived as urban memory boxes that preserve and reveal, through their emptiness, traces and layers of use, past or present landscape units. Entitled Remblai-déblai, their project studies the geological and archaeological approach, drawing inspiration from the process of processing the soil and the information drawn from it, and then working on the representation of this information. Within the framework of Remblai-déblai, and in the company of members of the scientific community (geologist, archaeologist, cartographer...), VLAN Landscapes physically reinvests a vacant lot like a laboratory and exposes the process of extraction of the soil sample up to its archiving and storage. The methods of extraction, the machinery and equipment, the systems of information processing and archiving are all mechanisms that will be used to inscribe the memory of the soil in the collective memory.
VLAN Landscapes is a firm of two landscape architects, Micheline Clouard and Julie St-Arnault. Their work is defined by a conceptual and sensitive approach aimed at creating places that highlight the intrinsic value of landscape. The duo also pursues research on the city and its interstices, focusing on the unstructured sectors of cities in general and Montreal in particular. For the past few years, VLAN paysages has been exploring the possibilities of ephemeral development of vacant lots with a view to reconstructing territories with the memory they contain and the community that runs through them.
Press releases
PROGRAMMING THE VOID
The void is built.
Outdoor installation:
Cleared space and event at the corner of Leo-Pariseau Street and Park Avenue.
As part of 5@7 programmed, the memory of the ground resonates in the hole :
- visit of the geologist - August 2
- sound performance - August 16
- poetry evening - August 23
- performance / backfilling - september 2 EXTERNAL INSTALLATION - excavation
From July 19 to August 31, 2002 at the corner of Léo-Pariseau street and avenue du Parc (near the Parc / des Pins interchange)
The shaping of the void. The result of an oscillation between the laboratory, the construction site and the studio, this installation, like a hole through a series of superimposed maps, is a drilling in the Montreal soil. The landscape, our medium, is shaped to become a revelation of memory in the city through a poetics of process linked to the dynamics of place. A void is constructed. Acting as a mechanism of recognition, this hole isolates significant elements of the history of the place. An opening in the city, to the city. A volume of soil taken from the site gives way to a public space that is inscribed through the spaces of conviviality, representation, gathering and contemplation of the city. In constant evolution, this installation is sensitive to the weather and to the appropriation of the place by the urban fauna and flora. This space is defined by its setting, its warm and humid atmosphere as well as by the very presence of the ground which constitutes its attraction, its reason for being. Stanchions offer a window on the ground, a mechanism that allows us to retain the treated walls and to insert ourselves into them. In the Plateau Mont-Royal district, an invitation to experience the Montreal underground. On the path of daily rituals, a vertical deviation is announced.
The inauguration of the void takes place on Friday, July 19 from 5 to 7 pm at the corner of Léo-Pariseau Street and Park Avenue (near the Pins interchange).
Photos: Jean-Pierre Caissie
INTERIOR INSTALLATION - Embankment
From July 23 to August 11, 2002 at the Centre d'histoire de Montréal.
The matter of the process. The installation proposes an archival journey of the archaeological and geological process expressing the back and forth between the laboratory, the construction site and the workshop. Offering itself to contemplation, the space is conceived as an interface between the past accumulated in the ground and the evolution of the ground perceived in the urban landscape, all scales combined.