Exploring the depths: encounters with karst landscapes
From field explorations to conceptual challenges, the Disnovation.org collective navigates the complexities of creating site-specific work in the karst terrain of France.
4th September 2023
First visit of Nicolas Maigret / DISNOVATION.ORG. Introduction by François Jacquier with a wide range of documentation. Visit of a forest, and walk in the landscape to show karstic specificities as: sinkholes, limestone "plateaux", influent streams.
24th-28th October 2023
Maria Roszkowska Nicolas Maigret and Baruch Gottlieb came during 4 days in order to meet the commissioners and discover sites linked with the karst’s specifities. Long walks in the countryside, meetings took place and a caving experience for Nicolas Maigret and Baruch Gotlied with François Jacquier, Anne Corriol and Philippe Perrin. A day in Montavoies with Wim Cuyvers’s who is now involved in the process.
They start to plan organization and share first ideas.
A meeting has been organized with Vincent Fister / Pôle Karst, more involved in research and mediation.
November-19th December 2023
There are real debates on content and artists' initial orientations. A production
proposal was submitted in November 2023 by the Disnovation.org collective that was widely discussed and subsequently challenged.
Their proposal, which consisted of imagining a route through different karst sites, proved complex to envisage in the long term: terminal maintenance; authorisation to pass through private areas and monitoring a route from a mobile phone – an approach with known limitations that has not always proved reliable.
Discussions around the question of the life of the work and its transmission to various audiences – the challenge of the commission – led the artists to develop a second proposal in March 2024.
