ARCHWAYS, ARCHES, ARCADES
"One of our most urgent tasks is to relearn how to travel, possibly very near to where we live, in order to relearn how to see." Marc Augé
Laurent Roth suggested to Guillaume Vieira, a photographer, and Kendra Walker, a town planner, that they should accompany him as he set out to discover the CENTQUATRE district. The theme is those archways and arches that are so abundant on the former mortuary building and funeral parlour, and on his walk Laurent Roth set out with his two associates to try and find out where and when they recur in the architecture of the nearby streets. The archway, the arch, and the arcade: figures used in great religious, princely or residential architecture… But they turn up in odd places! The Archways Arches Arcades project takes the multiple form of an essay film, a performance, an exhibition and an artist’s book that once again follow the route walked by Laurent Roth and Kendra Leigh Walker in the La Villette district, accompanied by Guillaume Vieira’s photographs.
LAURENT ROTH
Born in Paris in 1961. After studying philosophy, he made a good many films, from the outset adopting documentary fiction as a vehicle: "Les Yeux brûlés" (1986); "Modèle depuis toujours" (1988); "L’Impromptu de Jacques Copeau" (1993); "J’ai quitté l’Aquitaine" (2005). As a scriptwriter he likewise has a fondness for all the worlds that build bridges between fiction and reality, and has collaborated with many film-makers, including Jean-Daniel Pollet, Peter Watkins, Vincent Dieutre and Dominique Cabrera. Laurent Roth has also published two books: on Abbas Kiarostami and Chris Marker. While in residence at the CENTQUATRE in 2008-2009, he wrote the script for "Stalingrad Lovers", a film by Fleur Albert, currently in production.
GUILLAUME VIEIRA
Born in Paris in 1984, he grew up and studied in Lisbon. After graduating
in sculpture in 2007 and in visual arts in 2009, he participated in several
collective exhibitions and was awarded the Anticeparte’09 prize in Lisbon. He works mainly on words and their meaning in everyday life, trying to use photography as a means of finding the difference between their ontological meaning and their multiple possible representations.
KENDRA LEIGH WALKER
Born in Toronto in 1975, she settled in Montreal after travelling widely, with a degree in political science and a fine art diploma from the Chicago School of Art. She decided to resume her studies, this time in France, at the Institut d’Urbanisme in Paris. Kendra Walker introduced Laurent Roth and Guillaume Vieira to the "pragmatic childlike" process she had elaborated in Chicago and reframed in Paris: a way of looking that is directed as much at the artistic process as at the way of seeing the city, a commentated succession of the possibilities of the body in space.
