The Grand Parc at the northeast of Lyon gives space to tourism, nature, and sports. The lake is a result of economic exploitation of the soil, used as building material for several urban building projects of Lyon. The urban park covers almost 2,200 hectares on the outskirts of the city. It was created in the 19th century with the digging of water infrastructure to help control the flooding of the Rhône. It also includes wildlife protection zones, and is the backup drinking water resource of Lyon.
Lyon is also the city of the Lumiere brothers. They are credited as the inventors of cinema as a mass medium, and probably the first ones who enlightened the everyday: their early films show unspectacular scenes showing everyday activities as moving images. Often these images were shot in Lyon.
They also sent their cameramen on tour with the cinematograph to film the street life in Japan, Algiers, Venice, Egypt, and other places thus producing early touristic images. From that moment, people were able to see other cultures, ways of living and form an understanding of these other lives and places, through the lens of the camera.
Public Sculpture -sous les pavés, la plage consists of a platform floating in the water near Fontanil beach. This platform reminds of other platforms, of other gatherings of people, of mass demonstrations, uprisings and imagery of the revolution, often depicted in paintings like for example Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830).
The street then becomes the stage, with opposing sides, flags and moments of euphoria, but also with images that refer to past and recent events in France. The banner bearing Bernard Cousin’s famous quote from May ’68: ‘sous les pavés, la plage’, once again links the past with the present and the future.
The platform – an image of representation – is presented as a film at the biennial’s venue, in a setting where also the public performs, visible as a spectating audience.
