The collaborative construction and deconstruction process of the tower designed by Tadashi Kawamata for the Parc de la Villette in Paris.
The Collective Folie work, the first tower designed by Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata
in Paris, dreamed up for the Parc de la Villette, has evolved throughout many workshops
attended by high school and university students, volunteers and Kawamata.
The tower dialogues with Bernard Tschumi's Folies and took shape as impromptu
accumulations and arrangements emerged through working and brainstorming with
Tadashi Kawamata. The load-bearing structure was gradually clothed with pieces of
recycled wood.
This DVD-book contains the film by Gilles Coudert and an edition showing the construction
and deconstruction process in Tadashi Kawamata's collaborative project. The film tells the
story of this adventure through the words of the various participants and reactions from the
workshop members who contributed to this “collective folly”. The texts by art critic
Emmanuelle Lequeux analyze and discuss the stakes involved in such a proposal.
Echoing this installation in Paris, the book also provides perspective on ten other tower
projects Kawamata has built throughout the world.
Tadashi Kawamata (born 1953 in Japan, lives and works in Tokyo and Paris) has made in situ art throughout the world and was artistic director of the Yokohama Triennale in 2005.
His work concerns itself with architectural space as an urban or designed social context or product.
A careful study of the human relations that define it and the way of life which results from it allows him each time to
determine progressively the nature of his project.
His pieces, for the most part temporary, are generally made from timber sometimes from salvage material from the
immediate vicinity.
Tadashi Kawamata's pieces recreate connections between the past and the present, between outside and inside, between
the actual and the potential: they reveal another identity to the spaces, highlighting the invisible but quite real aspect of
their cultural and social dimension. The creation of a community with which he shares the research and physical work is
the drive and basis for each of his projects, as we can see with the experience of Saint-Thélo.
