The Ark
A site specific installation by Romain Tardy & Squeaky Lobster
Proyecta Oaxaca, festival Internacional de diseño y artes digitales
Ethnobotanical garden of Oaxaca, Mexico
April 19th & 21st 2013
The Ark is an ephemeral, site specific installation built around the cacti that line the Aljibe, at the heart of the Ethnobotanical Garden of Oaxaca.
Adopting a poetic approach, The Ark gives voice to the garden’s plants, participants in the work, the beating heart of the space and an unpredictable choir.
Telling their story, revealing their fantasised and fantastical nature, The Ark is a mise-en-abîme of the trail. Loosely inspired by the myth of the Great flood, this audio-visual installation in three parts unfolds like a movie project into space, in which the wandering spectator plays the role of the camera.
Concept & Visual design by Romain Tardy
Music composed by Squeaky Lobster
Project Management by Nicolas Boritch
On the invitation of Proyecta Oaxaca, several artists from the Antivj visual label have devised four visual and sonic works to be installed at the heart of the Ethnobotanical Garden in Oaxaca. Conceived of as a trail of light, these in-situ works offered the chance to (re)discover a singular and magical location in a particularly unique way – by opening the garden to the public at night.
A trail of the senses, in several variations, it also presents spectators the perspective of four artists on this atypical space, in which ancient nature and new technology come face to face, like a distant echo of the ancestral techniques that have allowed for its conservation.
The trail consisted of the following four works:
Onion Skin, by Olivier Ratsi
The Ark, by Romain Tardy
3Destruct | Oaxaca, by Yannick Jacquet, Jeremie Peeters & Thomas Vaquié
Réplica, by Laurent Delforge & Thomas Vaquié
A project commissioned by Proyecta Oaxaca.
All photos by Romain Tardy
Video filmed by Xavier Chassaing & Romain Tardy.
Edited by Romain Tardy, with audio by Squeaky Lobster.