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Planas Archive iterations

Badlands, 2022

 // Group Show MANIFESTATION JE/US // 2022

 

 

 

Community project through the intervention of archives, video and digital prints.

Video 19'57''

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The records of Longueuil are generated by the stories of local heroes and persons who have contributed to set-up and construct what is known as History. Meanwhile discussions developed by citizens, singular experiences and sensations, are not registered, they are part of a popular heritage which is normally forgotten or normative.

 

This is the result of a mediation project involves public participation. The main idea was to generate life in disused and discarded sites by performing two workshops. The first action was developed at La station de pompage (workshop_01) with students, and the second at l’Archive du Marigot (workshop_ 02) with the same group of participants. The whole process was documented in video and projected in the exhibition room accompanied by prints and other materials.

 

La station de pompage de Longueuil designed in 1987 by the architect Mario Petrone is an interstitial space located between rue Pointe Sainte Charles and boulevard Taschereau halfway between old and new Longueuil. Hardly known with very little public information available on the work. It is a forgotten space of Longueuil which is very difficult to reach due to its lack of access. A silenced, unreachable, unknown place serves to explain untold stories, to generate community debate and reflect upon issues which are often disregarded. The workshop consisted in documenting singular experiences of the site and its particularities (its design, materiality, but also misuses, transformations, wear, contextualization…).

The site's inaccessibility is perhaps the reason of its strange reality: green and concrete island encircled by roads. While much debate currently focuses on necessary future parks, paradoxically La station de pompage, a beautifully maintained urban garden with great potential is ignored and left unused. The station reveals our contradictory emphasis on conservation and ecological awareness while leaving existing spaces underused and unshared.

 

The complementary and diverse forms of recordings taken by the students documenting these encounters on site at La station were used to reveal collective thoughts and discussions in order to generate a history which is normally not told. Documents produced during the action-workshop were subsequently introduced in the archives of l'Archive du Marigot.

 

Paradoxically, archives serve to keep a track and memory of who we are but which are usually forgotten and become empty spaces with no life. Little resources are destined to maintain, interpret and activate the documents, images and files. They rarely function as an agency or a platform for debate and discussions within these archaeological and excavation sites.

 

In l’Archive du Marigot, the main concept was to activate the space with the residents and workers of the area to develop an artistic intervention in the archives (related to urban planning, architecture and community).

 

The intention was to bring the archive closer to the public and students in order for them to understand how an archive works and how to question its inner proper narratives and its function for society. The idea was to use the images of La station de pompage they produced in the previous workshop and work with the concepts they developed as a result of the first encounter. In the archive their main task was to look for images of La station de pompage and the surrounding areas.

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