Just a quick note to say that we're very excited to have been chosen for the 2012 Cité des Curiosités artists residency in Marseille. We'll be working with the people of la Bricarde and Sextant Et Plus as part of Marseille 2013 to create a permanent sculpture, a limited edition art-book and a short film – all on the theme of time. You can find a description of the whole project here on Sextant's website, but in brief, this is what we're planning:
The sculpture, Fin, will be a working sundial made from perspex-fluo, a translucent orange plastic, specially designed to absorb light and let it out along it's edges, so that it looks lit-up inside. Through the middle of the sculpture there will be a line of all the dates of birth of all the people we work with there. The sculpture will be sited in one of the Cité's public spaces.
The book, Time Machine, will be a photographic and textual record of how time passes for the people who live in la Bricarde, including the series of ephemeral interventions we're going to create with different groups out there. The pages will be uncut, so each person will make their way forwards through the book in their own way – as with time, there's really no going back. And there will be 366 copies; 2012 is, as they say here, une année bisexxtile.
The short film, l'Arret, will be made in the calanques with a group of young people from the Cité, and will show them cliff-jumping – but not the falls, the moments before, the quiet tension of teenagers preparing to launch themselves into the void. We'll project the film onto the walls of one of the tower blocks for the the autumn equinox, when the sculpture and book are due to be launched.
So all that should keep us on/off the streets for a little while!