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May 2017, English/French
12.5×19 cm, 280 pages, b/w ill., softcover
ISBN 978-3-95679-265-6
Design
Marianna Calagna
Copublishers
IDEFI-CréaTIC, Université Paris 8
Status
Out of print

Uchronia is a project initiated by the artists Annie Vigier and Franck Apertet (les gens d’Uterpan) in 2014, which emanates from the analysis of individual or collective attitudes and behaviors produced in the public space of a given city. The word uchronia, used among others by the French philosopher Charles Renouvier in his book Uchronie, l’utopie dans l’histoire (1876), means “non-time,” that is, a time that doesn’t exist.

 

In response to the increasing transformation of public spaces into functional areas toward which individuals are guided to fulfill a given activity, the two artists call upon citizens to become uchronists, to infiltrate public life with physical modules coming from daily behaviors, synchronized and adjusted according to context. Contrary to flash mobs or performances, these actions don’t address spectators. Passersby are accidentally witnesses, attentive or not, of these presences and gestures that maintain the formal appearance of normality.

 

More than a comment on the Uchronia project, this publication is thought of as a collective uchronia that infiltrates the book as space of publication, as a public space. According to the protocol proposed by the artists and by the art historian Emanuele Quinz, the contributors have freely occupied different sections of the book (the table of contents, introduction, chapter, illustrations, notes, appendices, etc.). Each section may be illustrated several times, or not at all.

Softcover
€19.00