Jonas Vansteenkiste applied for a residence in 2018 to investigate his fascination for the city of Paris and its urbanisation.

During his stay at Cité international des arts Paris, he did research in architectural archives and architectural heritage.

 

In his research, he was fascinated by the stratification of the city and its history. He is particularly fascinated by the "Hausmannisation" of the city.

 

Haussmann's renovation of Paris was a vast public works program commissioned by Emperor Napoléon III and directed by his prefect of Seine, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, between 1853 and 1870. It included the demolition of medieval neighbourhoods that were deemed overcrowded and unhealthy by officials at the time. Huassman developed:the houses and buildings and wide avenues; new parks and squares; the annexation of the suburbs surrounding Paris; and the construction of new sewers, fountains and aqueducts. They presented it as a gift to the city and his inhabitants.

 

Haussmann's work was met with fierce opposition, because a lot of people lost their house in this gentrification, and he was finally dismissed by Napoleon III in 1870; but work on his projects continued until 1927. The street plan and distinctive appearance of the center of Paris today is largely the result of Haussmann's renovation. Although the city became more modern, the agenda of Napoléon III and Haussmann was to control the streets and make barricades in the small streets impossible by making wide avenues. This intervention made Paris easily accessible by the military to end uprisings for the people. 

 

 

The work "a note on Hausmann” reflects on this tension and duality of city gentrification. The work starts from an observation of one of the Wallace fountains(1) in Paris, the video shows us details of one of the beautiful drinking places in the city. 

 

This drinking fountain is inhabited by bees and wasps that makes drinking dangerous. Vansteenkiste sees this as a metaphor for the Haussmann gentrification of Paris.

Vansteenkiste emphasises this by editing extreme close-ups and by the sound scape with a poem and voices by Gertrude Stein.

 

Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in the Allegheny West neighbourhood of Pittsburgh and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for the remainder of her life. She hosted a Paris salon, where the leading figures of modernism in literature and art, such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson and Henri Matisse, would meet. Vansteenkiste uses Gertrude's voice and poem:"If I Told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso" 

 

Gertrude started writing, specialising in automatic writing, a stream of consciousness technique in which the subconscious mind is guided as much as possible. Just like in modern painting, Gertrude wanted to let the existing order and structure make way for new ways of seeing and describing in literature. Her way of writing did not always take into account the applicable grammar rules, but she claimed that there was a need for a shock effect and inconsistency.

 

The observation and reflection and tensions between image and sounds makes it a note on the life and dynamic of the city.

 

(1) The Wallace Fountains are public drinking fountains named after, funded by and roughly designed by English art collector Richard Wallace (1818-1890), founder of the Wallace Collection. The final design and sculpture are by Wallace's close friend Charles-Auguste Lebourg, a sculptor from France.

 

They are large cast-iron sculptures scattered around the city of Paris, mainly along the most frequented pavements. They are recognised worldwide as one of the symbols of Paris and locally, too, there has never been any public criticism.

 

For this fountain, artist Lebourg created four caryatids representing kindness, simplicity, charity and sobriety. Because of the way she bends her knees, each caryatid is unique.

​​​

​

with support of: