I relate The Paris Project to my two-years every-day experience in Bucharest as a “creative worker”, so to use Bourdieu’s nomination towards contemporary artists. Being a flâneur is the only way to survive in a metropolis that can not be reduced to a political-industrial existence anymore; the city, as Baudrillard puts it, is the space of sign systems, new media and codes. Using Guy Debord’s theory about the city stroller – dérive, detournement and integrated spectacular – I have explored certain parts of Bucharest that were once related to the city’s nomination of “Little Paris”. The purpose is simulating a missing reality, using nowadays given situations. The object that I’ve created, Paris, is a simulacrum that reifies the existence of an entire city and civilization. Strolling with Paris is part of the process of artification and gentrification implemented to certain parts of Bucharest.
The dérive has led me towards creating psychogeographies as part of urban situations. The object Paris, placed in the “Bothanical Garden”, is a sign, a clue offered to the passer-by, in order to develop a spatial consciousness, while taking part in a constructed situation.
Part of the detournement, the video transgresses the limits of spatiality, forging the original by inserating the object Paris in almost every situation. Paris exists as a trompe-l’oeil, under disguise, part of every-day life events. Suggesting the exit from the city, Paris is rather anihilated, although it can not ever be exhausted.
Paris becomes a brand, posessing the eternal youth of objects, situated everywhere like a commercial that conquers space. This is the last stage of the flâneur’s intercession, the integrated spectacular, or the total visual experience. You are what you see. The factory observed early in the morning, trams, fences, clothes hanging outside the windows, rush, too much movement, turmoil – these are slides from the city we live in. No inner life, no feelings, just sheer movement and Paris, the ultimate state of mind. In the end of the video, we are given the illusion of the artist’s death, ran over by a tram while carrying Paris. Is Paris dead indeed or was it used a double?