The commission

The AMPAVE association wanted to commission an artist as part of its activities to raise awareness of the issues surrounding canal transport. The association, located in Douai, has two main activities: the collection of archives related to inland waterway transport (photos, objects, documents) and the knowledge transfer related to this profession to the general public. The members of the association would like to encourage younger generations to take up the inland waterway profession, especially as this means of transport is relevant to the current environmental crisis.

In order to do so, the commission is to reflect the "life of the boat" in a sensitive way. Inland navigation is much more than a profession, as it requires an atypical rhythm of life on the water. This specific way of life needs to be documented, as it is currently undergoing major changes due to the issues of increased globalisation linked to canal transport.

The artwork

In response to the commission, the artist duo Cléa Coudsi and Eric Herbin proposed a set of works consisting of an installation, an edition and a film. After a residency on a barge, the artists wanted to highlight the singular view of boatmen on the environment. Indeed, the experience of living on a boat profoundly changes ones relationship with the natural elements, space and time.

The installation will consist of 12 steel panels on which will be printed photographs of the landscape taken by the artists from a barge. This large-scale project will be exhibited in different contexts (contemporary art exhibitions, presentation in the halls of public places or companies, outdoors).

To accompany the installation, a publication is being produced: an educational artist's book. This will include photographs of the commission printed on detachable elements that allow a model of the barge to be built.

A film is also being produced.

The artists

Graduates of Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains, Cléa Coudsi and Eric Herbin have worked together since 2002 in Lille.

They explore the relationship between voices (and the stories they tell), places, phenomena and materials. The form that these materials take, the use that is made of them and the functions that they find in them preside over the conception and construction of technical arrangements. The very often complex installations created present numerous margins of indeterminacy meaning the artists are not necessarily able to control the process, "exposing" them to the unknown of what will be revealed by the very movement of a reality that escapes them.