public words at Saint Blaise here I am somewhere else, Paris 2oo8, this was the sequel to “public words” 2oo7 

On the monumental 5 x 5 metre surface of a building, in one sentence, Malte Martin published, each week, his perception of the neighbourhood… This gave rise to reactions and comments… Displayed the following week, in map form, where the topography rose and fluctuated around the isles of an archipelago, the different “answers” inscribed insular identities and declarations. “here I am somewhere else” came to an end during the ‘Nuit Blanche’, in the ‘Square des Cardeurs’. For the occasion, the usual lighting was switched off and replaced by 5o light globes from 2m to 8cm in diameter. They all vibrated gently in the dark with a white, low energy light. The square breathed; like something animal, it had a pulse and a beat. A haze wafted up and with its gauze-like effect swaddled everyday things. Thanks to sound tracks, letter boxes, bushes, and waste bins all exhaled phrases and vapours… People stopped, children’s cries meant discovery: bundles of sounds, inaudible a metre further on, punctuated the square with little tales. The archipelago was projected turn by turn with phrases; moving landscapes capsized the buildings. Train of letters moving on pixel panes of windows, the phrase proceeded: “here” is written on the façade, “I am” lights up at the back, on the balconies. “somewhere else” appears on the tower, to the right… a game of consequences, endlessly renewed. Was this the thinking of the inhabitant, or the spectator? Before the thought was fixed, the isles floated, breathed, nodding in the undulating curves of the topographic lines…