The design, construction and reception of all interventions by Daniel Buren in the public space of the city of Istres in 2013.
Daniel Buren accepted the invitation from the City of Istres to intervene in the city, where he proposed in situ works, moveable works, ephemeral works, temporary works and permanent works.
This DVD-book contains the film by Gilles Coudert and the book which describes all the work done in Istres by Daniel Buren, including One bouquet: five colours minus one, Buren's work which transforms and literally revives La Pyramide, the abandoned nautical centre which became a venue for circus and dance performances. Buren's simultaneous work Et si la ville se colorait… cast a spell over all the buildings around La Pyramide. Les Cabanons was the venue for several evening performances by the Buren Circus in Parc Sainte-Catherine. Then there is La Grande Diagonale, the permanent work installed on the esplanade in front of the new City Hall which connects this new urban area to the centre city and was inaugurated at the same time as the City Hall.
Gilles Coudert's film follows the construction process through which these works emerged. It records the words of many of the people involved in the creative process and shows how visitors interact with the works both on a daily basis and during special events. In his interview with Gilles Coudert, Bernard Blistène, director of the Musée national d'art moderne, discusses his analysis of Buren's art, provides keys to understanding his works and discusses Buren's place in the history of art.
Co-founder of the BMTP group, Daniel Buren (born 1939 in Boulogne-Billancourt, France) is a major figure on the international art scene. He made a name for himself on the art scene in the 1960s.
In 1965, Daniel Buren settled into an approach based on a striped canvas with alternating white and coloured, 8,7 cm‑wide stripes. The introduction in late 1967 of what he called a "visual tool" laid the foundations for a practice that broke with tradition and opened up a multifaceted body of work in which freedom was born, as the artist likes to point out, out of both internal and external constraints. Daniel Buren explored this "visual tool" by developing it on a flat surface and, from the end of the 1960s, in three dimensions.
