Total Environment (Sculpture) as a Symbology: The Mesological Study of the Axe Majeur in Cergy-Pontoise

Abstract

In Cergy-Pontoise, the artist Dani Karavan is commissioned to conceive the three-kilometer linear path named Axe Majeur (Main Axis), connecting the city center and the vast riverside. Instead of a work of art to contemplate, Karavan builds 12 stations in succession and in the form of instruments with which people are equipped to measure and to process the existent environmental data and to find their own interpretation of the site. By making factual information measurable and translatable into cultural connotations, Karavan’s work implies a mesological point of view from which osmosis between the sculpture and the site invalidates the opposite physical/phenomenal. The paper studies this method based on the notion mediance proposed by the geographer Augustin Berque and on a field survey. Two principles constitute the method: First, Karavan invents a sculptural metrology functioning in the way of the perceptive calibration system. Secondly, the Axe Majeur shows a “total environment” which means not only 12 parts as a single unit but also the inseparable relationship of Karavan’s environment (art) with the whole geographical environment. Each part annotates the signs left behind after Earth’s motion (e.g. topography, geothermal energy) and after cultural activities (e.g. orchard, view of Paris) and turns these signs into the basis on which imagination could be formed and new meaning could arise. By articulating historical and spatial dimension with an environmental symbology, the Axe Majeur constitutes an innovative urban planning method which moves away from an international-vernacular (modernism) or historical-ahistorical (postmodernism) debate.

Article received: April 2, 2019; Article accepted: May 25, 2019; Published online: September 15, 2019; Original scholarly paper