Walk in Brussels
LE DOMAINE DES DIEUX
A walk through Brussels with Adrien Tirtiaux
Saturday, 24th April 2010, 13:3o
Meeting point: Entrance of Hotel Bloom! (Rue Royale 250, Brussels)
The walk through Brussels, which Adrien Tirtiaux has developed for kunstpassanten and which takes place in collaboration with White Space, Zurich, during the Trajector Art Fair, is an artistic attempt, connecting public space with a narrative, thus making it a special kind of reading. ”Le Domaine des Dieux” is inspired by the Asterix comic “The Mansions of the Gods” in which Caesar concocts a plan to absorb the Gaulish villagers into Roman culture by building a Roman colony around the village. The emerging contrast between vernacular architecture and the organised, power reflecting Roman planning is seen as a metaphor for Brussels’ chaotic urbanization process with monumental institutional structures protruding village-type neighbourhoods and minds. The walk proposes a visit of Brussels using the sequential narrative system of the comic book medium, emphasizing peculiar spatial transitions, which are typical of EU’s capital. Around relevant urbanic gestures in the city center – the financial northern district, the “Nord-Midi Junction”, the Palace of Justice, and the European area – the lack of urban context is replaced by a narrative frame in a try to reveal a certain kind of ideological discrepancy between Brussels’ inhabitants and its instances of power.
The walk itself was documented by a comic strip, available at Hotel Bloom! during the Trajector Art Fair Brussels (in the room of White Space, Zurich).