Marche avec / Walk with Bettina Malcomess
Auteurs / Authors : Bettina Malcomess
Description : Exploration urbaine – walking from the library center to the Carlton center.
Axes de recherche / Research axes (Play/Urban) : Public space / common space
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In situ (may include different times > time 1, time 2, time 3, etc..)/ peut inclure différentes étapes > Temps 1, Temps 2,Temps 3, etc..
Medium :
Genre : tour guidé par Bettina
Concept :
Participants : Marielle Agboton, Jc Lanquetin, Silvio Milone, Marie Fricout, Nadiraa Patel, Eve Chabanon, Ricky Mapeki…
Durée / Duration : une après midi
Ville / City : Joburg
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Exhibit
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Analyse critique / Critical analysis :
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FREE SPACE
Mapping on real time during Bettina’s presentation just before the walk in the CBD, Johannesburg.
Marielle – récit et photos
“On est entré dans le Carlton center, un petit centre commercial et Bettina nous a montré un hôtel désaffecté au premier étage. Hôtel classieux avec tourniquet et baie vitrée, on avait l’impression de voir le spectre du groom service derrière les barreaux qui empêchaient l’accès au hall de l’hôtel!
Cet hôtel était désaffecté depuis des années mais nul ne le détruisait, nul ne le reconvertissait en un grand magasin. Cet endroit resté inoccupé, quasiment intact, et surveillé. comme si le fait qu’il donne son nom au shopping mall en faisant un lieu sacré. J’ai demandé à Bettina si il faisait, au moins des visites, elle m’a dit qu’elle connaissait quelqu’un…”
[Christ Mukenge] Thoughts following a walk through the city with Bettina
I was born and grew up in Kinshasa. The city there,unlike Johannesburg, has grown old. In the centre of Kinshasa there is just one kind of building: a rectangular structure, no taller than ten stories, whose rooftop is not visible from street level. In such edifices, there are no elevators. Soldiers often occupy these spaces, or homeless people.
In Kinshasa, no respect is given to historical buildings – to what should be archives conserved for future generations.
Instead, moss is allowed to overrun their facades and the result in humidity that causes illnesses. The result is uninhabitable spaces, which people flee. We should have conserved our buildings as has been done in Johannesburg. Or perhaps we should have built new structures, designed so as to take into account our past errors. In Kinshasa, construction is anarchy. There is no direction, no urban planning. We dream of South African-style modernity. Of technology. We dream of the future and, in the process, forget our architectural past. Before we forge ahead, we should look back – back to that which gave the city a certain beauty in the years immediately preceding independence. Johannesburg is firmly anchored in the 21st century. Despite the fact that they are not recent, the buildings look so contemporary to me… That’s because I’ve never seen anything like this. The structures are clean and well kept: a far cry from what I know in Kinshasa. This statue really caught my attention. In my country, you would never see a statue of a naked man on view in the street. Nudity, where I come from, is never foregrounded in this manner. To show a famous person in a state of undress is to dishonour that person: it bodes ill. From generation to generation, this view is passed on. In my Bantu world, this is unheard of. And yet, such a statue brings me to think about nudity in a different way – that is, from an artistic and a contextual point of view. I think: why not? After all, our ancestors did not go clothed. Perhaps such figures would help give a better sense to our children of what Congo and Africa were like long ago.
I wonder if something like this could be reproduced in Kinshasa. Would it pose ethical difficulties? Might it open up onto a lesson about culture, about nudity in the lives of our ancestors, of the people of Eastern Kasai, the region from which I originally hail? Might it open onto a novel understanding of space?
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Marie – récit et photos
Lorsque je regarde à nouveau les photos prises lors de la marche avec Bettina
je revois le décalage que représentait cette “visite architecturale du centre historique de Johannesburg”.
Cette visite reprenait exactement le schéma classique auquel j’ai pu être habituée pour visiter une ville, pour visiter une ville européenne plus exactement. C’est à dire, lorsque j’arrive dans une ville inconnue, assez machinalement, je prend le transport en commun qui m’amène au centre, je fais un tour de la place centrale et de ses vieux bâtiments, de là j’essaie de rallier les quartiers plus modernes, comprendre la dynamique de la ville, et en général je passe par les rues commerçantes (et m’aperçois la plupart du temps qu’il s’agit des mêmes magasins que dans ma ville).
A Johannesburg nous avons donc pris le tramway-bus, que je n’avais encore jamais eu l’occasion de prendre et nous avons visité le quartier historique
jusqu’au shopping center
et son hôtel