light_water_city

[2010]
The Centre Pompidou has opened a new museum in Metz in April 2010. The city is already a dynamic place for the arts and organizes its own Nuit Blanche for the third time. The main theme is «water» and I’m invited to exhibit and perform «J’ai la Pêche» along the Moselle river banks.

The city center itself is an interesting example of medieval urban structure defined by a mix of buildings blending French and Austro-Hungarian architecture in a multi-layered distribution of land and water: in fact walking around the city is just like being in a slow motion roller-coaster moving up to the square where the City Hall and the cathedral are facing each other, then down to the market place and further down to the web of canals and up to the bridges connecting the islands where the old town lays. Hard to find contradictions here – even for the funny candy shaped building of the new Pompidou Center.

After an amazing sunset the «white night» begins and a wave of crowd is flooding the city.
At half way through the night a thin rain starts to fall but people don’t seem to care much about it. When eventually the rain pours down, the streets become suddenly empty and lights are turned off.

The wild wave is gone, the white night is over and it keeps raining.

[The installation]
25 fishing rods are arranged in sequence  and secured to the ground by a concrete cube. The lines are in electro-luminescent fiber. They dive and fade into the water, in tension. Some fishermen cast their lines over the surface of water which pulses at the city rhythm. Every concrete cube include a small sound system which spreads the sound of the « light-water-city » suite. This original soundtrack was written in collaboration with Gino Dal Soler, a friend and a musicologist and with Stefano Pilia, young and talented musician and composer.

The « fishing » starts at sunset and ends in the middle of the night.

> See the video

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This project has been supported by the Fédération Nationale pour la Pêche en France and Pezon & Michel, Street fishing concept.