12:35 15 July 2024

Commune de Saint-Gilles
Gemeente Sint-Gillis

Building from 2 sides / 3 clips

If I walk alongside a property that I am not allowed to go into, drawing up a blueprint of its walls, I certainly don't have access to whatever is in this mysterious place, but I can still map the perimeter [..]
Although I cannot know or claim to know what comes inside and goes outside [l'aller-retour], or what is between that in which this thing is and that which is in this thing (between the property's location on the outside and its exploration on the inside once its doors are open), I must know that it is something, in the absence of knowing what is this something.

Tristan García: Form and Object [*]

And: the indeterminacy of the boundary, the barely perceptible / unavoidable evidence of permeability of that place as a place of action – which is to say: comings and goings ]aller-retour[ *across the perimeter* as energetic flows – is what really compels your attention, perhaps. The signs (painted flag, exuberant vegetation, roof plantings) are indicators and evidence of that surplus, or over-spill, at the same time as the monochrome portrait points to risks and realities of survivance – breakage across times.

Which could be to say: what draws you is less the interior / contents as viewed from outside, than the perimeter itself, as a situation of slippage, encounter, frictions: the exchanges it attests to and, you feel at once: is still performing / publishing

#un monument
#ecological thickness eg of boundaries – Gilles Clément [**]
#declaration / stealth
#publ–ish

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[*] Tristan García: Form and Object. A Treatise on Things. Translated by Mark Allan Ohm and Jon Cogburn. Edinburgh University Press 2014 pp 28-29. Thanks to Simon Bayly for this reference. Edits as indicated.

[**] Gilles Clément: Manifeste du tiers paysage. Sens & Tonka 2019.

Videos of building / situation, Brussels 15/07/2024 with thanks to Walden Festival, especially Katherina Lindekens and to Musica, especially Esther Ursem, for the invitation do 'little natures', a series of workshops on ecological radio in Brussels and Pelt (12–14 July 2024) with Max Baraitser Smith. These videos were made on the way back to the station.