Walk in London, Montreal, New York, Los Angeles… on monday 17 september 2012

A project by Natasha Christopher, Marielle Agboton, Jc Lanquetin.

The principle of this project is simple. We walk and drive the same day, more or less at the same time, in the inner city of Johannesburg and in suburbs. We take pictures as if we were  in London, Montreal, New York, Los Angeles, Moscow, Maputo…

It is about this city, built with the imaginaries of others cities in the world.

(to be continued) / Click on the images to enlarge them.

« Johannesburg began as a mining camp of tents and corrugated iron buildings during the Witwatersrand gold rush of the lite nineteenth century. As South Africa was consolidated as a white supremacist state, Johannesburg developped into colonial town. Like every colonial town, it found it hard to resist the temptation of mimicry, that is, of imagining itself as an English town, and becoming a pale reflexion of forms born elsewhere. Johannesburg’s earliert settlers did not experience a sense of having genuine ties with the world surrounding them. To a large extent, this tradition of mimicry continues to determine if not the language of the city today, then at least part of it’s unconscious. » Achille Mbembe, Aesthetics of superfluidity, in Johannesburg, The elusive metropolis, Duke university press, 2008. P. 38.

A serie by Natasha Christopher around palm trees.