[Winter 2024]

Cities are born from clusters of structures that provide shelter for human life and activities. Through them flow grids of thoroughfares that form patterns of movement and exchange. That’s what an urban agglomeration is: a dense knot, large or small, placed at a certain point in a rhizomatic lattice that runs through an entire territory. It is this territory that the artists in this issue’s thematic section explore: they travel through the city, its peripheries, and backcountries to take the measure of how human beings inscribe their urbanness in and transform the natural world.

ÉRIC TABUCHI / NELLY MONNIER
Exposer l’Atlas des Régions Naturelles (l’ARN)

Éric Tabuchi and Nelly Monnier undertook to “photographically” inventory the buildings and landscapes characteristic of some 450 “natural regions” of France, a monumental adventure aimed at offering a renewed view of the country. The first four volumes of Atlas des Régions Naturelles (ARN) have already been published, out of a total of about thirty. Tabuchi and Monnier also explore the conditions for presentation of their images in a series of exhibitions, including Soleil Gris, on display at the Rencontres d’Arles in summer 2023. with an essay by Luce Lebart

BERTRAND CARRIÈRE
Autoroutes 10-20-55

Bertrand Carrière regularly drives around a large area on the south shore across from Montreal circumscribed by highways 10, 20, and 55. He has built a sort of visual diary showing the diversity of structures, empty lots, people, and activities found there. Some of his images are displayed on billboards alongside these same highways, with the words “À qui appartient le paysage?” (Who owns the landscape?) emblazoned on them – a way of questioning how we develop territory.
with an essay by Michel Hardy-Vallée

SUZANNE LAFONT
Nouvelles espèces de compagnie Roman et Anticipation

Upon invitation by the city of Bordeaux, Suzanne Lafont spent time travelling around the city before focusing on the wild plants emerging from interstices in streets and sidewalks. She composed a sort of herbarium, with narrative elements taken from the toponymy of her gathering sites, and a second herbarium with colours that looked irradiated on a black background. It’s a way of reminding us that the city is inscribed in a broader natural territory whose history we must know and whose future we must take into account.
with an essay by Julie Martin

[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS ]
[ Complete article, in digital version, available here: Rhizomes, Atlases, and Herbaria ]