BIO
CONTACT
EXHIBITIONS
SCENOGRAPHY (1984-94)
WORK
M2, 1990
Painted cardboard
M3, 1990
Painted rods
MEASURE, 1990
Painted cardboard
MEASURE (ORANGE), 1990
Painted cardboard
CLAW, 1990
Painted cardboard
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8 WORKS/ACTIONS (Mont-Tonnerre), 1990
These 8 works/actions dating from 1990 were made and installed in an empty parcel located 12 impasse du Mont-Tonnerre in Paris, adjacent to where I was living at the time, a block away from the Montparnasse Tower. These works were done in connection to my involvement with ‘space occupation’, as an artist, as a scenographer (at the time), and with my engagement in fighting a speculative apartment building project that would evict residents and destroy the neighborhood. The project was opportunistically grounded on the planned extension of the Musée Antoine Bourdelle, in an area structured by alleyways, with a tight local network and many historical landmarks of the Montparnasse era of the twenties. Finally, the area was saved from demolition in 1986 thanks to the local militant resistance and the “Association des Impasses du Mont-Tonnerre et de l’Astrolabe”.
In 1990, n°12 impasse du Mont-Tonnerre, which was a former car repair garage, was left unoccupied before construction of the museum’s new wing. To have such a large, vacant, secret outdoor space that no one saw or even knew about, right next door to my building was quite crazy. I decided to make use and occupy it, and undertook these 8 actions, carrying my work out and installing it in the open, then destroying it. I used what was on the spot: buttress, corners, ground, made or left ‘nature’. These were the ingredients at disposal. I made basic forms like measuring tools with painted matter (cardboard, rods) and found materials. The 8 actions were: M² (yellow and orange), M3, Measure, Claw, Shelter, Measure (orange parallelepiped), Ex-tense.
The only documents of these works were some photos and notes, never exhibited nor shown.
The motif of all these work/actions is ‘space occupation’, ‘precarious scenographies’ as I wrote then, through standing, lying, unobtrusively being there. The works coexisted with other ‘occupants’ such as graffiti, garbage, old mattresses, wildflowers, sand, and grass. The idea was ‘measure’, what is a square meter, how can one count, how to relate, there, here, in a speculative urban environment, overlooked by a 60-story high tower? Habitat, tent, cover, shelter, box, stable, fragile, empty, full. These were measures and questions, simply from my own measure, my body.
Mara Goldberg, October 2023
eng / fr