Last modified: 2017-05-31 by ivan sache
Keywords: celdran (julien) | art |
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The Belgian plastician Julien Celdran has realized several flag installations in France. They are presented on his website.
Olivier Touzeau, 4 October 2006
The most recent installation by Julian Celdran is
called Drapeau de Septembre pour le Pays.
In September 2005, the association Autour de la Terre invited the
group of artists Intérim, équipe d'artistes to contribute to the
project Charrette - une semaine d'interventions rurales (Cart - a
week of rural intercessions) in the 21 villages of the communauté de
communes des Quatre-Vallées, in Haute-Marne, eastern France. Each contributor to the project had to build a cart and to move it from
village to village, where it was used a stage for the presentation of
art shows and discussions with the villagers.
Celdran decorated his cart with flags, all made of three vertical
stripes; he designed the flags during the cart's trip, after the
colours of the landscape. At the end of the week, the public was asked
to select the best of the nine designed flags, and selected flag #8,
symbolizing "an emerging field of oilseed rape". This flag was hoisted
over the Maison de Pays in Auberive.
Ivan Sache, 4 October 2006
In May 2000, Julien Celdran contributed to the collective exhibition Un Tour
au Square by hoisting four flags in the square Maurice Schwob, on the butte (mound) Saint-Anne, which dominates the port of Nantes.
The four flags are the signal flags Alpha November November Echo, therefore "writing" ANNE.
Ivan Sache, 4 October 2006
Julien Celdran set up in May 2000 an installation called L'Ambassade des Possibles, place Dulcie, Nantes. The installation is made of 18 flags hoisted by groups of three on six windows of a dilapidated house. The flags represent a country without either a territory or a government, an image of utopia and a snook cocked at the municipality of Nantes (spoofing the display of French flags on the town hall).
The flags are all divided in three equal vertical stripes. To design
the flags, Celdran followed the basic rule of heraldry (metal should
not be put on metal, nor colour on colour). Using four colours (red,
blue, green and black) and two metals (argent and or / white and
yellow), this makes 48 possible flags (starting with a colour: 4 x 2 x
4 = 32; starting with a metal : 2 x 4 x 2 = 16).
Then Celdran dropped the already "existing" flags (for instance,
France, Italy, Romania, Nigeria, Mali - but Peru was kept!) and selected among the remaining flags the 18 flags to be hoisted on the
windows.
The flags are the following:
Flags used for L'Ambassade des Possibles - Images by Ivan Sache, 5 October 2006 (click on the flags to see larger images)
First row, upper floor
Second row, lower floor
Ivan Sache, 4 October 2006