France: art in the industrial wasteland

[Deleted]

Let's face it -- Roubaix is one of the ugliest and dreariest cities in France. In its heyday, it was the textile center of France but as we know, that has all moved on to other continents.

Unlike a city like Detroit, however, Roubaix has not emptied out. Its original residents have moved on and left the city to poorer classes, including a very large percentage of immigrants. Still, the population has declined from a high of 124,661 in 1896 to its current population of 97,952.

Nevertheless, it has a rich cultural life, and La Piscine, the permanent municipal museum created from a former bath house, is excellent (I'll dig out the photos soon). However, on this visit to Roubaix I was going to see something else as part of the Europe XXL exhibits. First I had to find the place.

I took the Lille metro (which runs all the way to the Belgian border) to Roubaix and exited at the strangely named Eurotéléport station.

This place does not actually allow you to beam yourself instantly to any other part of Europe. It appears to be a major transportation hub, with bus and tramway lines leaving from there.

It is in a renovated part of town, but since it was Sunday, the whole place was locked down. The crumbling center of the city was saved by factory outlet malls, which renovated and moved in -- but when the shops are closed, you are not even allowed to walk on the streets -- the gates were closed.

One of the old giant textile factories was nearby. It has clearly been converted to some other use, but I am not sure what.

Large areas of the old row houses have been demolished and replaced with low income housing, which certainly look better than what was removed, even though I wouldn't want to live there.

Some newer eating establishments serve the local population.

I had to keep walking to get to an older part of town.

                   

                   

I was looking for something called La Condition Publique, whatever that was.



I looked it up, and it used to be a factory for the "conditioning" of wool. It was built in 1902.

There was a slight improvement in some of the houses as I approached, a hint of the arrival of "bobos."

I did notice an abandoned former high school waiting to be converted to something.

Anyway, I finally arrived at the building that I was looking for.

(to be continued)

[spindrift]

How far is Roubaix from Paris? And in which direction?

[Deleted]

Roubaix is next to Lille on the Belgian border. It is considered to be a tri-city area: Lille-Roubaix-Tourcoing is the term used to refer to that metropolitan zone. It is 203km from Paris to Lille or 55 minutes by TGV. It took about 15 minutes on the métro to get from central Lille to central Roubaix.

[imec]

Stop it. All this stuff is so cool and I'm just not going got have time to see it.

[Deleted]

Maybe I visited at a peculiar time, but this is perhaps the first time that I have ever visited a major cultural site and had it all to myself without a single other visitor.

As you may have noticed from the photograph of the exterior, the building itself is gigantic.

The exposition is called "Ici Berlin" and is devoted to young artists from Berlin and their wild ideas.

One of the artists did unpleasantly lifelike plaster busts of people.

I was perhaps more intrigued by the original function of some of the spaces even more than what was occupying them.

Ceramic tiles were not just used everywhere. They were used in kitchens and in bathrooms. Was this space the refectory or the shower room for the workers in the past?

My guess would be the refectory due to the high glass ceiling.

But it is just an idle guess.

The other main areas were obviously spaces where the real work was done in the past ("conditioning" the wool). They were filled with bizarre videos which I very much appreciated.

Every now and then I would come across something that would subject me to a question? Are these really the restrooms or are they another artistic display? I didn't go and check.

I'm pretty sure that they were really the toilets, but I will never know.

This room quite fascinated me. There was strange and upsetting (mechanical rotary) movement under the white cloth. The sound effects made one wonder what was really happening.

There was much electrical flashing and sparking from one of the exhibits, as well as the smell of ozone. Naturally, this sort of thing is very difficult to photograph, but I did my damnedest.

                       

                       

Sometimes I feel kind of weird when I am all alone in such a place. But on this particular Sunday afternoon, I felt that everything had been placed there for my personal and private enjoyment.

On my way out, I had to admire the inevitable Trabant, as well as the shopping carts with tomatoes growing in them.

I can only wonder what goes on in the laboratories of La Condition Publique.

Back in Lille, more strange exhibits were awaiting me.

[bixaorellana]

Not having seen them in person, maybe I'm wrong, but I didn't find the busts unpleasantly natural. What they immediately reminded me of were the Roman portrait busts, some of which were painted, where the aim was to represent the subject as accurately as possible.

Some of that tilework is surely a much later addition to the building, which hardly enhanced it.

How strangely wonderful to have that huge space to yourself. It must have been rather dreamlike wandering through the strange exhibits as though they were coming from your own mind. That gouged wall with all the red on it is fairly disturbing!

... I had to admire the inevitable Trabant ...

~?~

[Deleted]

I just rediscovered this thread and looked at the photographs with almost as much interest as if somebody else had made the report. It's amazing how certain things can fade from your mind even when it was all so vivid at the time.

[bixaorellana]

Oh! I am absolutely thrilled to see this. And you're right about how its orbit seems to have swung near to us then far out to space again and it feels like a whole new marvel!

It's just immensely cool. The slightly creepy room with the red settee is like something out of a near-nightmare and the video room seems to be windows randomly catching bits of the universe.

Just wonderful -- thanks for beaming it back to us.

[lagatta]

bixa, trabants were the emblematic car of the old DDR - the former East Germany. They were dreadful of course, with a two-cylinder, two-stroke engine, but an odd cult has grown up around them. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant

[fumobici]

You might remember the Trabant from this video:

[bjd]

Here's what they look like by day

[bixaorellana]

Now that you all have filled me in (thanks!), I think I vaguely remember hearing about Trabants back when the Wall was opened and they came chugging into West Berlin. They really are cute, like a Richard Scarry vehicle.

[Deleted]

I showed more than one heading west in my Berlin Wall thread.

[bixaorellana]

You know, I'll bet that's the first time I really remember hearing about them.

I guess in one way, they're not really on topic, but there's something about them that just belongs in this thread, somehow.

I love this thread. I think it's cool the way you show how looking at art somehow makes the consciousness bloom open and become more receptive, so that even the facades of businesses or yes, little E.German cars seem to become a part of the art just witnessed.