Stuck

I’d seen this house some months ago already. It hardly could have been closer to mine, just on the next crossing street, on the same block, and I can almost see it from my old bedroom window on the second floor. Most likely because of that proximity, it took me some time to realise that it might as well be as mysterious and fascinating as any of the other distant abandoned houses I know.

It used to be just next to an old factory building, that I hardly recall, though it was just there out at my window for years. A few years ago they destroyed it and quickly grew a big orange block of apartments.

Stubbornly still there, just next to that clumsy modern building, the little parpen construction slowly rotted, abandoned. A couple of days ago, i passed by it on my way to the post office, and realised that – strangely on that early spring – the vegetation blocking the entrance had diminished. I figured that I could easily get in.

I approached cautiously, as in that residential street, only ten minutes away from downtown, i was uneasy as to how the neighbours would react to my curiosity. With a single little rangefinder camera in my pocket, i crossed the street and took a couple of pictures of the front and of the surrounding constructions. Waiting for some passers-by to go, I walked around slowly, and then, as things got quieter, i turned back around towards the house 67, rue du marquis.

A woman was standing on the sidewalk, just in front of the house. She was obviously waiting for me, and i feared she would give me the usual paranoid neighbour alarm. But she seemed as uneasy as me. A middle-aged, little woman with colorful square glasses. Without me needing to say anything, she proceeded by telling me what she knew.

« I’m living nex door, she said pointing the little individual house on the opposite side of the new building. I saw you were taking pictures, and i was wondering if ever you were a relative, because i guess it must be some kind of shock to see the house that way. I think they must have crashed the roof while building the new apartments, and you know how it is, as soon as there’s no roof left, it’s the end.
I knew the owners, you know, before they left. They were in the middle of their divorce, and the man hung himself. She left then, she had to settle the loan by herself, and she left and never came back.
So they built the apartments, and it was quickly looted just after. When i saw how forlorn it was, i went to the town hall to get some information. I figured that i could maybe buy the house, destroy it and build me a garage. But it’s a mess, you know, there’s no way. There’s inheritance matters that won’t be settled.
Anyway, I hope i’ve not been to much of a bother. Have a nice day… »

Just as she left, i jumped into the house.
The wall of the corridor, on the building side, had been completely destroyed and was now in a way replaced by the external grey concrete wall just near, which seemed oddly recent compared to the rest of the house.
The planks of the roof were slowly making their way down on a floor i couldn’t figure of what it was made, so much covered as it was with a strange magma of wood, waste, earth and crushed furniture. An old brown leather armchair was emerging out of it, still in front of the fireplace. In the second room, the crashed roof had taken almost all the space, except for a cupboard in a pretty good shape. The worn yellow tapestry contrasted with the blue sky of that sunny afternoon. A broken TV set laid on the cluttered up floor.
On my way to the third room, i encountered my usual friend from the ruins. A grey and white cat was curiously looking down at me from the remnants of the roof.
The last space was the bathroom. Each of the pink ceramic squares on the wall had been pinched and now held a white spot. There was still the cabin of the shower, as it was built in metal and glass. But there was now a tree too.





I stood there for some minutes in the quietness. Once again, surprised by how silent and peaceful ruins can be, even in the middle of the city. The few noises from the street were muted. Then, some people appeared on the new buildings’ parking lot, that i could see from there. The former corridor of the house ended by the kitchen room and there was no wall left to separate the bathroom from the parking lot, only a broad grid. I could see people come and go, unloading their car, but they never saw me. They never looked towards the house, even when broken glass crushed under my feet. It was like the little house wasn’t even there anymore… and had already swallowed me in its inexistence.



I made my way out, and as i stepped on the sidewalk, catched a glance of the neighbour lady putting things out of her house, and in her car.
I left, but still for some reason felt compelled to look back at her. Alone, she was filling up her car with stuff, just as if she was leaving for good : several large travel cases, a little piece of furniture… Stunned, i stopped to watch from a distance. A couple of minutes later, she went out, locked the door, and in her small pink car, went away on the road.

Hollow body concrete

Sinking

Last time, when i started my writing by saying that not much had changed in Odomez, i knew that i was already bragging at the fate's face. Or turning my back to it, though almost consciously knowing that it was there, and that things would change anyway, very soon.


And changed they have. One half of the buildings is down, gradually erased by the machines, first tearing them down to rubble, then making piles with bricks, piles with metals, etc. These piles are picked up by a pair of tippers, who slowly go their way up to the water station and deposit everything into a new huge pile. They dig deep and muddy, black trenches onto what was a grass path, going back and forth like tired, giant insects. A couple of guys from the nearby project got the authorization of the site foreman to pick up the metals they could find onto the pile. It's funny how they agreed together on that, like an oral contract with shared interested. The two guys will most likely sell out these metals ; and while they are there, they prevent any damage to happen to the expensive water pump working on the other side of the water station, slowly emptying it. Indeed one week-end, a few weeks ago, some unidentified guys from the project cut a piece of the pipe and stole some cables. T., the foreman, warned us several times against "them", explaining that he once saw a bunch roaming around with large knives. "At this hour of the day it's ok," says he as we arrived, at usual, by the end of the morning. "They're still sleeping. But they come out by late afternoon. If they ever come by you, don't argue, just run." True that with our photo equipment and the flashing security jackets, we're definitly spotted as strangers. We never had trouble really, though it's true one day, as we had came to the water station through the project, we have been almost thrown out by a band of kids, the very same ones that nicely agreed to be photographed in front of the water station a few days ago. That day school was out, and the half-dozen streets of the project were filled with kids at mid-day, screaming and running around. But - never saw the ones with the knives. After that happened, T. hired a couple of nightwatchmen more for the weekends.


We have good relations with that guy, and it's for the best. First we have to be grateful to him letting us come and go almost as we please. We're under his responsibility, and he could have just told us to forget about it. We're not working for anyone, either his demolition society, nor their client, the local metropolis. He's friendly, and seems always happy to answer our dozens of curious questions about the demolition and his plans for it.
But more deeply, what i feel the most thankful for is that he prevented us from sinking into a simple feeling of anger towards the workers and what they do to what became, as we retrospectively realise, our workshop for a year and a half now. If he had rejected us, we would have been compelled to watch the disappearance of Odomez at a distance, without understanding. Maybe watching the whole site from the burned out roof of one of the Compagnons' buildings, as we did once.
Whereas this long agony of Odomez appears on a much less painful way to us as we can still visit the site once a week. And we realise how much destruction was also a full part of it. Each time a building gest crashed, it also opens new ways of seeing the others, new perspectives, not to mention access to rooms that have been shut for decades. Things that we wouldn't have discovered about Odomez if it had stayed wild. Reminds me of that psychological story of the kid who crashes his toy to see the insides, to see how it works. But of course, sometimes, you realise that things won't come up as easily as they got down.

Last monday, we had arrived for about a quarter of an hour when T., who was passing by, came over to us to say hello. Aurélie and I were both standing on the remnants of the former huge hall, once used by the Compagnons to stock their stuff. A week ago, a roof was above our heads, in the large and dark hall, scanded by the copper green metallic girders. But we were standing both fascinated, as a tiny part of the building had been left standing by the machines, to avoid disturbing the guys just beneath that wall still busy with the asbestos. Creating a strange vision of the hall still existing but now exposed to the weather and the sunlight. Water started to gather in flakes on the tired concrete floor, reflecting the girders and the windows, and creating beautiful Stalker-like visions with thing drowned in it. Switches were still on the wall, like nothing had happened for a century. I even stumbled upon a copy of Sega Saturn's game Fifa 97 : box, CD, book, everything was there if you need it ; a trace of the Compagnons' 20 years passage. They couldn't, eventually, erase it completely.
Aurélie was readying her camera on the tripod for a new photo in her serie. T. asked us what exactly we were photographying. I could only answer in a whisper : "There's so much things to shoot !" He laughed. "You have imagination."
Then he started explaining that we week before, they had demolished the other standing building, on the other half of the site. We hadn't seen it yet, as it was hidden from where we were. "It all crumbled at once like a house of cards. We pulled one beam, and everything crashed down with it." The whole thing was about 25 meters wide and 50 meters long, on two floors.

I don't know what i would have liked better, if i could have chosen : be there to see it or not ? and would it have been less bitter if it took three weeks as they planned it would ?
It has been weeks since i was thinking about this moment : when the giants would fall. These anthropomorphic silhouettes had emerged from the disappearance of the roofs. They linked me deeply and emotionally to the whole place, like figures to salute on arrival. At first, i thought it was too obvious, too simple, but why deny any longer that have an anthropomorphic relationship with Odomez ?
By inhabiting it, we gave it (again) a human dimension. Sure, it was never completely void of human presence. Our year is not much compared to the 20 of the Compagnons, who didn't fail to come watching from the other side of the fence, as the machines tore down their building, including some of the bedrooms they had occupied for a while. And the wilder parts have always been used as a temporary shelter by people around, drinking alcohol and who knows what else. Myself, the night after, drowned in half-asleep songes filled with visions of the now buried rooms, like i was trying to pull them out of the darkness they are sinking into. It's nothing like comparing this to the loss of a loved human being, of course.

But first, pointing out that emotional relationship is important to me, for a negative reason. It allows us, what we do and did there, to be distinguished from and over-seen and vile desire to collect places like theses like trophies, like a sport, and extract spectacular images from them. There's dozens of blogs of that sort on the Internet, taking pride from exploring dead/forbidden places. I more and more tend to see these as almost pornographic, driven by a pure scopic desire, used as a spare for a missing real act. One thing that we tried to avoid at all costs, knowing that anyway, what we could do would at best transform into something different from the place itself, and never document it, never give a real feeling of what it was. Places like these are too complex and too polymorphic to be understood on a single, speedy visit.
On a more positive hand, Odomez is of course also a mirror for our selves, and i think this is partly why it works well as a workshop. We see ourselves, our relations to the passing of time, to the nature of modern objects and artifacts, to the relation between man, pollution and nature, in all these rooms. We just found there, formed in cement, concrete, iron, things we had more or less unconsciously in mind. Thus, it also pushed us further, not only by expliciting those ideas, but by imagining what we would create out of them. How we would print our mark on them, how we would handle creatively with what is commonly thought as dead.


For this reason, one thing we fear is what our productions will become when the very foundations of those century-old buildings are erased. When the heap on the side of the water station is bulldozed inside the emptied lake, thus forming, literaly, the tomb of Odomez. As an example, my photographic production has never seemed more important to me, quantitatively and qualitatively, than since i'm working almost exclusively there, and i don't know how or if it will survive. Taking a single picture in a city street or in a house feels awkward. Of course, we already have vague ideas of things to do on the nude site, but will it be powerful enough to stand only on the fragile foundations formed by our former works, our memories, and the legend, the imaginary that we feel is already coming out of them ? I feel it will likely be the hardest part of it all. All the while succeeding in creating out of a sense of loss, out of our emotions, without getting crudely emotional nor exhibiting personal affects that certainly are not unique, and are not the most interesting man have felt.
So, once again, Odomez sends us back our own reflection as we gaze at it, sinking. For what once was a common place, a place for usual habits and lives, has succeeded in transforming its abandonment into something beautiful and absolutely singular, we wonder if we ever will be able to do the same.

Radio Aporee

Berlin based german artist, Udo Noll has developped a great project, Radio Aporee, which is opened and could interest any people into mental wanderings and sonic explorations. The idea is simple and consist in taking part in a sort of sounds map, with field recordings, easily captured with a phone, or simply uploaded from a sound file. From everywhere in the world, you can add field recordings, and localise the source on a googlemap, with a red circle. The description of this project is available on Radio Aporee website. This project is unlimited and open to everyone who wants to take part in.
Just try to navigate on the map, above New York, and fall on a base-ball field, then after a click on the place, you discover that few minutes of a field recording of a base-ball match can be listened to... Go above Berlin, to Sanderstrasse 13, just listen to the sounds remains of a home-party during a night of last september...

Music of the Woods Afterthought | Birdsong

After listening to the MP3 and hearing the birds above the music and trees I remembered David Rothenburg's book 'Why Birds Sing'. Rothenburg began playing music 'live' with birds in 2000, as you can imagine this route has led him into some remarkable places, atmospheres and experiences. The extract below is more food for thought concerning our role within nature and the landscape - An area of discussion that has transpired over the last few of posts...

'Bird songs are a genuine challenge to the conceit that humanity is needed to find beauty in the natural world. Whatever processes of evolution have led to their flourishing, no rigorous natural logic explains why they are so multifarious and complex. With deft listening, we can abandon our prejudices to find new expanses of music beyond familiar constraints. Their music is essential not arbitrary; playful but purposeful; repetitive, not boring. It possesses the necessity to which human art aspires'.

(From David Rothenburg's Why Birds Sing)

in the earth

Maps.01 | Speaking in trees

‘Though the quiet deep of solitude reigned in that vast and nearly boundless forest, nature was speaking with her thousand tongues, in the eloquent language of night in a wilderness. The air sighed through ten thousand trees…’
James Fenimore Cooper.



Today’s society is a heavily noise polluted environment where sanctuary and stillness is a rarity. The need for silent retreat however is still present and has been since past times when individuals would retire to sanctuaries of silence for re-composure of the mind and spirit. Today we venture into our surroundings and inevitably into nature to find this quilt of bliss and a re connection from what we have been removed so far from – a sense of place.

These woods are full of silence but where Cage's silence was filled with his nervous system and blood circulation, here it is filled with the gentle creaking of entangled bark and the wind that wraps itself around this timberous world. Sitting in the middle of these trees, with dappled light somersaulting dust through the air I realise my hearing is becoming more acute, more alert to the most tiny of noises, the most secrete of sounds. Within these woods and these splintering trees the main protagonist is in fact the wind.

Wind, by its very nature is silent unless objects are put in its way, in this sense the trees become the players, orchestrated by the wind, tuned by the seasons. It seems that trees have voices with the passing of a breeze, some moan, some stretch others become tempestuous knots.

This sanctuary is becoming rare, this place that we are tied and bound to, this earth that we will all one day return to. These trees that provide such a humbling sense of place, a sense of wonder and of sanctuary, if you listen closely you’ll hear them speaking...

Speaking Trees MP3

Q. What is your audio sanctuary? Where do you go to listen? What are your thoughts & memories of such places? Have we become so visually biased that we have forgotten our ears?