GRANDEUR NATURE, #1 street > Cluj-Napoca (RO) 2014

In March 2014 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, invited by Daniela Maier and Scena urbană association from the Council of Architects of Transylvania, with the support of the Institut Français, an artistic investigation starts about the changing flows due to the future transformation of an important and monumental street of that historic city-centre occupied by cars, into a pedestrian street. Various workshops are conducted with students and inhabitants directly in the Kogalniceanŭ Street, and a questionnaire is proposed about present experiences and futures changes.

Questionnaire Number-Cluj-2014.  https://usercontent.one/wp/www.numberproject.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Number-Cluj-2014.Questionnaire.pdf

A lecture is given about the #Number# project and process.

In May 2014, Kogalniceanŭ street is closed to traffic for 2 weeks during the Cluj Days organized by the municipality to experience this new pedestrian situation. With the Grandeur Nature installation-dance-concert created with sculptor Denis Tricot and electro-acoustician Eric Cordier, we occupy the street space located just in front of the Philharmonic. It is a transversal performance mixing our practices from the conception of the sculpture-instrument while undulations, vibrations, suspended and mobile wooden wires enriched with sensors that make it a real musical instrument to inhabit. An improvised concert performance is scheduled every day for a week.

To test the range of possibilities in this street, workshops and meetings are organized with classes of children, blind disabled people, a group of tango dancers presented a milonga evening with live musicians and even a Shotokan club practiced its weekly training with a presentation of katas accompanied by the surprisingly adequate sounds. The monumental instrument at the service of a martial art combining breathing, gesture control and energy qualities that are also at the heart of Grandeur Nature‘s sound production.

A public idea debate is organized in the street with architects, urban planners and different actors of the change, on the relevance, prospective and means of actions for the transformation of the street.