Looking at Nantes at Various Angles – Group D

LOOKING AT NANTES AT VARIOUS ANGLES

Group D

Kim Taehee (Department of Art Theory)
Vak Dongkyun (Department of Fine Arts)
Cha Minsung (Department of Architecture)
Choi Youeun (Department of Art Theory)

Main contens of group collaboration

Each person's view of Nantes is interpreted in different ways from different perspectives.

Detailed schedule

With analyzing the exploration sites suitable for each member’s direction, we went on field survey together. During the survey, we confirmed the direction of the common pursuit and tried to establish a common theme when they were coincided. However, rather than forcing to go on a common theme, we searched for a point of interest according to each theme, went around the appropriate places together and provided feedbacks to one another.

We explored maily on Green Line Route of Nantes. After that, we were divided the group into individuals and carried on additional exploration depending on selected exploration sites.

All members visited Basilique Saint-Nicolas, Arts Museum of Nantes, Botanical Garden and Le Lieu unique.

Sunday, June 30

We went through the Green Line route in general. Starting with History Museum of Nantes where you can see the history of Nantes, we explored the whole of Nantes in the order of the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul de Nantes, Arts Museum of Nantes, and Botanical Garden.

Monday, July 1

All members visited The Nantes Saint-Nazaire school of fine art

All members visited Galerie Paradise.

Tuesday, July 2

All members visited ENSA (The National Superior School of Architecture of Nantes).
After the tour of ENSA, we observed past and present of Nantes while going around the outskirt of  Island of Nantes, exploring the old city center and visiting previous factory area.

Wednesday, July 3

Vak Dongkyun  Visiting Passage Pommeraye
Cha Minsung We had time for individual exploration and held a plenary meeting in the afternoon.
We couldn’t  gather common theme, so we shared directional feedback on each member.

Thursday, July 4

All members visited Unité d’habitation (La Maison Radieuse).

Friday , July 5

Vak Dongkyun visited Le Lieu unique.
Eating together - Les Pieds dans le Plat
Cha Minsung  had a personal exploration time and a team feedback time in the afternoon.
Kim Taehee  Exploring Island of Nantes and filming the sea.

Saturday, July 6

Vak Dongkyun visited Botanical Garden.
Cha Minsung  After visiting the Machines of the Isle of Nantes, the plenary meeting was held in the afternoon to give feedback on each person's direction.
Kim Taehee  Exploring and filming the water trail and the rest of Island of Nantes.

Sunday, July 7

Shared feedback on each person’s work and held a meeting on the direction to proceed in Korea.

Main contents of individual work

Kim Taehee
Theme | Island of Nantes - Stepping on the god of the earth
Activities | Research of the former waterway focusing Island of Nantes and filming landscape of Nantes
Main Achievements | Filming videos and photo shooting

Vak Dongkyun
Theme | Exploring the visual and technical attributes of objects that occurred in the process of Nantes' urban regeneration.
Activities | Contrary to the premise that was initially suggested, right after arriving in Nantes, I began to study with a focus on specific types of objects that catch the eye usually. The contents of the research activities are as follows. Despite being a city in the same country, objects have adapted their form and function to their environment and society according to the engineers, designers or institutions of each city, and higher agents. Among those objects, I chose 1) rond-point (rotary) and 2) the sculptures of Passage Pommeraye, which are symptomatic objects in the area of transportation and commerce. The former is a technological object developed in accordance with the contemporary period in the flow of history and the latter is a kind of decoration that has an aesthetic function in accordance with the development of commerce in the 19th century. The reason for using these objects as a major unit of research is that I think the connections between the numerous agents related to them are beautiful. Therefore, the result of the activity will be mostly graphic images that recreate photographed images or graphic images of each object in a digital space.
Major Achievements | I found two kinds of objects that could be the theme of my study. The first is an object that has been there historically, and the second is an object that naturally emerged in the context of industrial or technological development. This object functions as an agent describing history and a translator who transforms the story of the city into material. Of course, there is a limit to showing such complex attributes of objects into a series of images but it seems meaningful to capture the process of urban regeneration as an image and to dig into a new network created from objects at this opportunity.
Cha Minsung
Theme | Understanding the green of Nantes
Activities | In order to understand the concept of ‘green’ in Nantes, I looked around parks, squares and downtown and was convinced that the ‘green’ they think is more than just plants with the concept of green.
Major Achievements | Changing from my initial plan, which simplifies mapping work to create three-dimensional pop-up cards or books. Checking the interpretation and direction of various meanings of 'green' rather than focusing on simple green-plants.

Choi Youeun
Theme | Nantes in terms of heterotopian spatiality
Activities | The city called Nantes, a space for play, a space for memorial, which shows stagnant temporality through memories of the past. Nantes is looked into and interpreted in terms of heterotopian spatiality. Focusing on the landscape influenced by Jules Verne's novels, Nantes' heterotopian character is analyzed. The places I have focused on are The Galerie des Machines, The carrousel des Mondes Marins that visualizes the characters in Jules Verne's novels, The grand Elephant and the Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery and French destroyer Maillé-Brézé anchored in the river as a stagnant place of time.
Major Achievements | I visited the The Galerie des Machines, The carrousel des Mondes, The grand Elephant , The Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery and French destroyer Maillé-Brézé to secure photographs and video materials for the work afterwards. For the final work, I plan to use photographs and video materials that I took in Nantes myself and a film adapted from Jules Verne's < Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea> as a found footage to create a montage video.

Purpose of field activities

Kim Taehee
Nantes went through for a long time from the period when several islands were gathered until it gradually expanded its territory and became one large island. The history of Nantes is piled up while the seawater flowing between small islands turns into dirt and roads. What will the seawater look like now that has been flowing slowly? Look for the traces of Nantes on the missing traces.

Vak Dongkyun
The purpose of the field activity is to research the invisible objects of the city that have been adopted as the theme of the project before visiting the place.

Cha Minsung
I started with the question of 'How should I think of the expansion of the green space?'. Identifying the type of green space, and analyzing the expandability of the space after dividing it into points, lines, and faces. Through this, I tried to analyze not only the expansion of park, square and area but also the expansion of green in various ways. In addition, I attempted to check the space actually where the green space can be expanded and to represent the expanded part of the space by mapping.

Choi Youeun
Nantes, which has been through the process of revival and decline of shipbuilding industry during the 18th and 19th centuries, preserves the memory as a port city and saves its heritage, while as a fun space for attracting tourists, as a memorial space for reflection on their history, which served as a slave port and as a space where you can look into the history of the ships in the past. Various spatialities coexist in one city. The researcher assumed and tried to view the city of Nantes as a space with heterotopian characteristics. Michelle Foucault analyzed the spatiality that appears in one city after the emergence of the modern city and defined the phenomenon as heterotopian spatiality, in which elements that are hard to be mixed coexist in one city. The elements that stood out the most to the outsiders or tourists were the The Galerie des Machines, The grand Elephant and The carrousel des Mondes that visualized the characters in Jules Verne's novels. They are a playful space located in the center of Nantes. Along with them, Nantes installed and exhibited French destroyer Maillé-Brézé in an anchored vessel that shows the past temporality by stuffing it. In addition, The Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery which shows the historicalnes of slavery in a reflective attitude, was gathered in the vicinity. The researcher study Nantes' heterotopian characteristics through the landscape in which these various spatialities are inherent in one city, look at in contrast with the heterotopian spatiality in the representative personage of Nantes, Jules Bern's novel < Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea> and intends to work in a way of metaphorical speech.

Methods of field activities

Kim Taehee
After drawing an old map of Island of Nantes on a current map, I walk along the traces of the sea, which is now land. Filming water and landscapes that contain the characteristics of Nantes.

Vak Dongkyun
As I mentioned before, assuming that there are various signs that appear in accordance with the economic, social, and cultural development of the city, I decided to focus on some objects that contain these signs. As a way of field activity, I took pictures of objects appearing in the city. The photographic - images that I have taken here are more like another object translated into images that have the ability to act by themselves rather than the meaning of a record or archive. What I am interested in is that the image clearly proves that the object was once there, but when the image - object connection goes through transformation in a series of technical intermediations, the object generates a new meaning on the surface of an image. In other words, the method of this field activity is to look at an object, how it creates meaning there and how an image crosses the boundary between an object and a sign.

Cha Minsung
Analyzing after checking the space of face, line and dot that become the basic space of green. After comparing the discovery in the field with the space identified by Google Maps, I tried to consider whether the actual space could be expanded and if not, how it could be expanded. In the field activities, I film them after checking the space. I archive and divide it as per each point, line, and face.

Choi Youeun
As a method of field activity, I visited a places that metaphor the above-mentioned heterotopian spatiality and took pictures and videos. Representative places I visited include The Galerie des Machines, The grand Elephant and The carrousel des Mondes and Jules Verne Museum as well as Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery and French destroyer Maillé-Brézé to carry out research.

Acquired data from field activities and the results

Kim Taehee
Walking and filming in 13 areas in Island of Nantes

Cha Minsung
The mapping result, which was initially conceived, was converted into a pop-up format. Anticipating the expansion of existing parks, green spaces and green areas, they were planned to be transferred onto mapping. However, the definition of green that they are looking at is not simply attaching the title of green to plants and natural objects, but new definition of green was observed. Based on the findings, I plan to display the newly defined green of Nantes, not the green limited to the existing plants, in a pop-up form.

Plan to use the results

Kim Taehee
The videos taken while walking on the previous waterway are printed as a photo and attached to the map of Island of Nantes. Creating a video that combines Nantes' water and map images.

Vak Dongkyun
Through this Art Platform 2019, we plan to create and share photo-image of a close but complex connection between objects and images based on what we saw and felt in the field. Archives are being acquired quickly and accurately more than anything else in the digital based era and photograph art must be able to speak about the times and places in accordance with its own style of writing these records. I hope that it will lead to an opportunity to present another method of contemporary photographic capturing the place rather than using the results as simple data

Cha Minsung
Points, lines and faces of the map and the green space, which were to be the result of mapping, are taken from the focus of plants themselves to harmonizing plants with artworks and objects that people focus on. They will be exhibited in a pop-up form through follow-up work.

Choi Youeun
The achievements from field activities will be used for entries for future exhibitions. Using two films adapted from Jules Verne's novels , it combines and contrasts photos and videos taken at Nantes. In addition, a short essay-type text containing an idea about Nantes' heterotopian character, borrowed from Jules Verne's novel is written and used in the middle of the video.

Expected effects and suggestions

Kim Taehee
If we continue field activities through visits and working on individually or jointly based on that, it could be helpful to the artist him/herself and the host organization firstly. Among the local institutions and officials who initiated our research and above all, if a sustainable network is formed between art platform participating students and students in The Nantes Saint-Nazaire school of fine art, it is expected that the meaning will become more solid.

Cha Minsung
The existing frame of natural objects and plants, commonly known images of green can expand the perception by making the existing frame to stereographed as viewed from Nantes.
I would like to suggest that the general meeting to be held in the beginning of exploration. I hope to have time to receive feedback. Especially since the last plenary meeting was held on the last day, it was regrettable that we could not receive feedback.

Choi Youeun
The video works produced on the basis of data from Nantes field activities are expected to remind people of Nantes' urban characteristics and to understand the heterotopian characteristics of modern cities. In addition, not only the researcher's work, but also various works related to Nantes are introduced in the form of the exhibition to be held in October. As a result, I hope that it will inform more people about the city of Nantes in France and contribute to the positive effect of Nantes’ progress as an artistic city. As a suggestion, it was a useful time on the whole but it seems that the visiting time of The Nantes Saint-Nazaire school of fine art and The National Superior School of Architecture of Nantes was rather long. Since the explanation is based on facilities and hardware rather than the contents produced at the schools, it would be good to reduce the time to visit the schools a little and use it efficiently in other places. And what I expected as an Art Theory student was the artistic activities that took place in Nantes. In fact, as an outsider who did not speak French, there were many limitations in finding activities related to art activities. In terms of program management, it would be nice to provide some sources to find information.