#gissen

Reconstruction of the Mound of Vendôme: Imagine an environment that invokes a more revolutionary environmental and socio-natural scenario: in the center of the Place Vendome wrapped around the base of Napoleon’s column is a glass box dotted with holes, such as one may find in a natural history museum or zoo and that typically holds plants or animals. Inside is a monumental mound of lifeless dirt. The mound is a reconstruction of the one built there by members of the 1871 Paris Commune. The Communards created this mound of dirt as a type of cushion for when they toppled Napoleon’s column – a hated symbol of war and imperialism – to the ground. The contemporary glass box and its dirt mound stands there under the rebuilt column as both an object of the past and a possible future in which that column will be moved or will no longer exist – an environment with a type of revolutionary history and potential.