This is the first event in which The H Project is participating since we came back from the USA in August.
We had the chance to take part – after hearing about it totally randomly and at the last minute – to the 5th edition of the music and visual arts festival ECHO À VENIR. Which in 2016 was inviting the city of Detroit, obviously.
Each year at the same period, the event in Bordeaux is receiving DJs from the city invited to the festival. After having Bristol in 2015 and Los Angeles in 2014, this year was dedicated to Detroit from September 22 to 24.
In this musical excitement, The H Project was able the present the artistic face of its work through a video and a photographic report. The exhibition featured a series of 10 pictures at the entrance of the festival site. The compositions were here to reflect the double-sided types of situations existing nowadays in Detroit, mixing an old heritage and visionary actions. Capturing architecture and physical marks, working with various scales, the visitor would dive into a binary atmosphere between steadiness and chaos, persistence and mutation, past and future. This complexity – inducing people to take more time to see the two views in the photos – was making a statement about how Detroit also needs time to be understood and to reinvent its future.
In addition to the photo exhibition, we edited a 10-minutes long video with clips we shot back in the D. Aiming to immerse people even more in the city’s atmosphere, the film was screened behind the DJs. After a first part showing some clichés people have of Detroit and the images of ruins and destruction we commonly see in medias, the video is linking a dynamic industrial past with a current urban stillness after the loss of half of the inhabitants. The 2nd part is telling how much we don’t know about the city until we visit it, what’s beautiful in its social bubbling and community involvement: a great architecture, sport events, community gardens, citizens initiatives, engaged firms, new small businesses, redeveloped factories, an esteemed University, a famous market and street art adorning facades.
It was a real delight to work with them and to be able to showcase in this beautiful place. We’re more than thankful to the Orphan’ Phantom team for trusting us!
// If you want to know more about the festival: http://www.echoavenir.fr
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