Parisian teenagers in mime face paint sprinkle glitter from an overpass onto cars. A playlist that could be a Godard soundtrack plays from a boom-box wheeled around by our leader, drowned out at this point by the cars below. At once the most encapsulating, engaging, and perhaps doubtful moment of the two-hour walking tour, this is the halfway point; halfway between Paris and its circumambient banlieus, or suburbs, halfway between the first and second hour of our walk, and halfway between cliché and art.
This third installation of the Biennale de Belleville sees itself as “urban neo-tourism.” A series of projects by various artists running from September 25 to October 26 seeks to engage with the morphing (or perhaps, as the Biennale itself demonstrates, already morphed) 20th arrondissement, by means of pedestrian narratives. It is a mobile contemporary art installation, invested in, and in its own way participating in, the gentrification of a traditionally working class Parisian neighborhood.
Laëtitia Badaut Haussmann, one of the commissioned artists, acknowledges that Belleville’s creative community (who came in waves in the 1980s) is complicit in gentrification, but also argues that many artists today are creating works that explicitly engage the neighborhood’s diverse population. "[Artists] used to be completely disconnected from the neighborhood, [but] now they are proposing projects for the neighborhood. It’s a way to not leave anyone outside of what is supposed to be the 'artistic public.'"
Opening Ceremony joined for Haussmann’s Program 2, in which a soundtrack moving from Holy Motors to Blade Runner parades a group of spectators on a two-hour stroll through the northern pocket of the 20th and across the périphérique highway to lower Montreuil. The walk is punctuated by the “apparition” of actors (running ahead to get into position in time for our arrival), who pose in still-life scenes, using the city (a corner, a doorway, an overpass) as cinematic décor.
“I wanted to observe the evolution of the architecture, which is quite strict in Paris, and looser in Montreuil,” Haussmann told OC. The 20th, part of Paris proper, is separated from Montreuil, a suburb, by the infamous highway finished in 1978. “Observing the evolution of urban dead zones and more occupied zones—it’s important to experience the parts that are more deserted and poor. It’s about how to find a way to occupy different areas in a pacific way, wandering, and straying.”
The strolling group—a chic bunch clad in brightly colored sneakers and expensive eyewear—is itself is a visualization of the gentrification the Biennale explores. Thoroughly entertained by the site, neighborhood fixtures from boulangers to bums waving bottles of wine stop us to ask what is going on. From one Brutalist building, a head pokes out from every balcony. The music drew curious and amused faces out from almost every window, so that we became at once spectators and performers. In short, it was an uncomfortable friction, although for Haussmann, a productive one. “It’s not exclusive,” she said of the performance. “Anyone can see it; it’s free, simple, and generous. This was happening at the beginning of the century in the streets of working-class areas: people playing music to earn money, spontaneous micro-concerts. It gave a bit of happiness in the reality of the day.”
The drifting stroll is an invitation to join the leagues of the flâneurs of the 19th century, a time when the urban crowd originally “became a society of spectators.” In her book Spectacular Reali
This third installation of the Biennale de Belleville sees itself as “urban neo-tourism.” A series of projects by various artists running from September 25 to October 26 seeks to engage with the morphing (or perhaps, as the Biennale itself demonstrates, already morphed) 20th arrondissement, by means of pedestrian narratives. It is a mobile contemporary art installation, invested in, and in its own way participating in, the gentrification of a traditionally working class Parisian neighborhood.
Laëtitia Badaut Haussmann, one of the commissioned artists, acknowledges that Belleville’s creative community (who came in waves in the 1980s) is complicit in gentrification, but also argues that many artists today are creating works that explicitly engage the neighborhood’s diverse population. "[Artists] used to be completely disconnected from the neighborhood, [but] now they are proposing projects for the neighborhood. It’s a way to not leave anyone outside of what is supposed to be the 'artistic public.'"
Opening Ceremony joined for Haussmann’s Program 2, in which a soundtrack moving from Holy Motors to Blade Runner parades a group of spectators on a two-hour stroll through the northern pocket of the 20th and across the périphérique highway to lower Montreuil. The walk is punctuated by the “apparition” of actors (running ahead to get into position in time for our arrival), who pose in still-life scenes, using the city (a corner, a doorway, an overpass) as cinematic décor.
“I wanted to observe the evolution of the architecture, which is quite strict in Paris, and looser in Montreuil,” Haussmann told OC. The 20th, part of Paris proper, is separated from Montreuil, a suburb, by the infamous highway finished in 1978. “Observing the evolution of urban dead zones and more occupied zones—it’s important to experience the parts that are more deserted and poor. It’s about how to find a way to occupy different areas in a pacific way, wandering, and straying.”
The strolling group—a chic bunch clad in brightly colored sneakers and expensive eyewear—is itself is a visualization of the gentrification the Biennale explores. Thoroughly entertained by the site, neighborhood fixtures from boulangers to bums waving bottles of wine stop us to ask what is going on. From one Brutalist building, a head pokes out from every balcony. The music drew curious and amused faces out from almost every window, so that we became at once spectators and performers. In short, it was an uncomfortable friction, although for Haussmann, a productive one. “It’s not exclusive,” she said of the performance. “Anyone can see it; it’s free, simple, and generous. This was happening at the beginning of the century in the streets of working-class areas: people playing music to earn money, spontaneous micro-concerts. It gave a bit of happiness in the reality of the day.”
The drifting stroll is an invitation to join the leagues of the flâneurs of the 19th century, a time when the urban crowd originally “became a society of spectators.” In her book Spectacular Reali