4.06 E
Campement électromagnétique
Electromagnetic Camp
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The electromagnetic camp is an architecture of expenditure that acts on space itself, on the air as a physical, although invisible, materiality. An architecture that dissipates, that radiates and transforms the electrical, physical and chemical composition of the air, rather than fashioning spatial boundaries by defining an enclosure, constructing an architectonics, organizing the physical delimitation of space.
The space of the electromagnetic camp is fluid, ethereal, emanant, radiant, without limits other than the physical deployment of energy that is expended locally. The myth has been recounted elsewhere ( Reyner Banham ) : there are two possibilities open to human beings arriving for the first time in a primitive, wooded area if they wish to live there. The first is to collect wood and burn it. In this case, man benefits directly from the infrared electromagnetic field created by the fire, which will heat the thermal conditions of his body locally and temporarily. The second option is to use this wood to build a hut in which the interior climate will be protected from the wind and rain. These, then, are two habitation strategies. The second is laborious and opaque : it involves constructing surfaces, erecting limits, defining space from the outside without handling the space itself, by delimiting it, clothing it. But in this case the space remains marginalized, remote, since the architecture is incapable of truly encountering the void, becoming one with the air. The electromagnetic camp uses the first habitation strategy, that of creating a place by setting up a habitable and quantifiable electromagnetic field. This is a rudimentary architecture, unmediated ; an expenditure of energy on the air, an immediate operation performed on space itself. It is based on the outdoors, nomadism, the immediate. Here, architecture is simple combustion, a release of electromagnetic radiation that establishes an invisibly modulated and progressive space, quantified by degrees between a burning center and a periphery of diminishing warmth. It is a space that dissipates, that has no stated end, no measurable limits, a space that cools to infinity, that unfurls itself endlessly. On contact with the body, this electronic radiation stirs the cells in the skin, penetrates deeper inside, heats the body. Simple combustion, a simple expenditure of energy, transient, without consequences, to be inhabited and abandoned. The electromagnetic camp is expended energy, electricity. The electromagnetic waves of the electromagnetic camp reproduce the spectrum of solar light : the emission of not only visible but invisible wavelengths : the ultraviolet, the infrared, as an opening to a hormonal relationship between man and architecture, stimulation of the endocrine system, regulation of the neurovegetative system.
The electromagnetic camp is a space with no duty of representation. Here, architecture enters upon a field of physical action, with no decorative or formal function vis-à-vis the boundaries of space. Architecture becomes pure expenditure, a violent act, that touches the eyes and the skin. Physiological, unmediated, formless, unharnessed, acting in the corporeality of the air and the body, the invisible architecture of the camp is an immediate force that unfurls, liberated, that conquers the void. This architecture puts in place a source of energy, heat, light and wavelengths that are invisible but necessary to the metabolism of the human body. The habitable place becomes this modified environment, an electromagnetic field that one enters and in which the body and its organs are in a physiological relationship. The source is composed of five fluorescent tubes, five specialized daylight tubes. An open-air architecture, a physical, corporeal, hormonal architecture, that acts on the skin and the eyes, that affects the endocrine system ; an architecture to be lived in as one tans./
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Campement électromagnétique
Installation
- Galerie chez Valentin, Paris, France, June 4 to July 1, 1999
- FRAC Centre, Orléans, France, May 4 to June 25, 2000
- Private collection since 2001.
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Décosterd & Rahm, associés
Collaboration : Jérôme Jacqmin