ParaSites (ongoing project)
This research explores the potential for using behaviours and strategies of parasites as a model for sculptural propositions in the built environment and investigates how these interventions might resonate with concerns in architecture, urbanism and socio-cultural politics.
See also: ParaSite - Opus Torpille
ParaSites - Fondation Avicenne, 2009
Electromechanical beaters, permanent magnets, electric cables, microprocessor
text
"ParaSites - Fondation Avicenne" has been conceived as a response to an invitation by Glassbox to intervene at a dilapidated edifice in Paris, designed by architect Claude Parent. The building’s “body” was constructed from top to bottom, suspended within an exterior “skeleton” of six colossal iron pillars - a particularity which retained our attention. Confronted with the impressive “dead” mass of the building, we thought about the behaviour of parasites which, most naturally, infest and profit from a vulnerable body. We devised little electronic “parasites” attaching themselves magnetically to the iron skeleton. With their electromechanical “proboscis” they prodded their “host”, making the monumental architecture resonate in a subdued manner. The impacts also caused brief detachments of the parasites from the surface allowing them to slowly jitter downward along the pillars. The descending parasites were connected to visible red cables converging at the centre of the façade, forming an enormous ‘spider’ moving downward over time. The parasites followed the same top-to-bottom trajectory which had been conceived by the architect for the suspension of the building’s body and, in this way, reunited the conceptual strength and the structural decay of the edifice in a descending movement.
Realised with a production grant by Glassbox, Paris (F).
ParaSite - Opus Torpille, 2007
Electromechanical beater, video projector, computer, interfaces
text video
"ParaSite - Opus Torpille" was our contribution to Opus Torpille, a collaborative intervention at the Fort des Dunes in Leffrinckoucke, near Dunkerque (F). The event was organized by La Plateforme within the context of Dunkerque l’Européenne 2007 and involved fourteen international artists. The guiding premise was to realize a number of individual outputs which can be linked, physically and/or conceptually, in order to create a unified site-specific oeuvre.
This version comprises an electromagnetic beater attached to a window shutter, situated inside the entrance corridor of a caponier. Tapping the metal surface of the shutter, the beater produces a Morse code pattern which translates into "Opus Torpille". In addition, each time the sonic sequence of an individual letter is completed, a projection of that letter is superimposed over the window shutter. The output of "ParaSite" fed into the work of other artists, where it was used as sonic raw material as well as a kind of sequencer, triggering different changes synchronously.
The work’s title should be taken in all its ambiguity: while the physical shape and movements of the beater are reminiscent of a parasite piercing its mouthparts into a host’s body, within the context of this intervention its actual function might be rather viewed as being auxiliary. That is, both in terms of aiding to reveal an inherent sonic aspect of a particular architectural element within the site as well as providing a supporting meta-sequence for the collaborative oeuvre.
Photos and general information about the Fort des Dunes (in French) pdf
Opus Torpille – Press Release (in French) pdf
