the picture your screenshot captured was taken in "Palais de Tokyo", in Paris
in 20XX

For example Tokio was one of the first graffiti I "collected/foraged" in Krakow.

when I arrive in a new city, disoriented, I often make a little stratigraphy of these re-occuring words on the walls. inspiration for later, hints, keywords. 
Graffitomancy ?

it sent ripples back to Japan, in Tokyo (in 2019) I had collected the word "Moscow".
 City signal/challenge/call unto each others.

Back to France : Palais de Tokyo is the museum of Contemporary Arts.

It is a strange building, in an ultra-posh part of town where Parisian don't really go if not by design.

it is one of the last remainder of the Universal Exhibition of 1937, which also upgraded the Palais de Chaillot which had been built for a previous Universal Ex. hib. i. tion (1878)

you could say they really shaped the city.


paris capital of the XIXth century. etcetera

the Eiffel T. somewhere in between.

where's the beginning of this tale ?

how early on the timeline do we even start

am I being too wordy ? words escaped the frame

it's a weird spot today

in 1937

the USSR banner and the Nazi flag flew over the respective Pavilions of the two nations, showing off.

I guess it was a weird spot even then.

2 years later, well.

all hell breaks lose.

Palais de Tokyo : most of it is underground

all these underground network of rooms and galeris under Chaillot are used as the kingdom of the survivors of a fictional World War 3 in Chris Marker's short movie La Jetée (1962)

in this film Paris was destroyed.
the world laid to waste (that's the first minute introduction)

space being doomed,

the only hope seems to lie in time itself.

a passage through time.

seeking help from the future or the past.

in 2014, invited artist Thomas Hirschorn turned the Palais de Tokyo's underground's space into a... labyrinth of "open-art collaboration" made of tens of thousand of car-tires, polystirene blocs, and used furniture.

photos don't real give justice to the craziness and energy of this free, and opened until midnight, "exhibition" (?!). people came and stayed all day. adding layer upon layer upon layer of words, things, practices.

it was called "La Flamme Eternelle".


I spent a lot of time there. Reading in the lmake-shift ibrary in the middle of the maze. encountering friends lost from sight for years.

open microphone, black&white printers and xerox machines and free duct-tape made for an interesting "organized" (organic ?) chaos.

sparks everywhere

I wanted to contribute with my current obsession about La Jetée

how it was not a "film" of moving pictures but a succession of photographs — with subtle rhythm and narration

I had counted (screenshoted) 414 pictures

ordered prints of them
like a deck of cards

re-ordered time
in a time-travel
non-linear
story

Chris Marker"s notebook — arranging images

ah yes — the year was 2014

Palais de Tokyo...

looking for echoes

what do you do ?
how do you anchor ?
in these new mazes

tickets please
badge
keys
doors