Eurotunnel

Projet, Calais, 1992

Stéphan Barron and Sylvia Hansmann follow the tunnel route by boat. They gradually drop buoys equipped with satellite beacons into the sea.

It is therefore possible to follow the path of the buoys in the English Channel or the North Sea.

The “Tunnel line” is scattered by the sea.

eurotunnel_manche

Two elements clash around the tunnel:

– The Tunnel, designed and built using cutting-edge technology. Thought out down to the smallest detail, it symbolizes man’s mastery over nature. The Tunnel seems like a gigantic and highly complex project, but it is small on the scale of the sea, and simple compared to the complexity of nature.

– The sea, an infinite and ever-changing element, whose richness and details we will never fully understand.

These two elements ignore each other: the tunnel allows us to cross the English Channel without seeing or feeling the water; from the sea, the tunnel is not visible.

With the tunnel, human movements become seemingly independent of the movements of nature.

We wanted to make the confrontation between these two elements tangible. Hence the idea of “dispersing the tunnel’s route” across the sea.

The tunnel and the water. Man and nature.

Determination and will, symbolized by the tunnel, and chaos, the source of life.

eurotunnel_balise

Satellite beacon for Eurotunnel

 

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Photographie, Exposition aux Assises du Métafort d’Aubervilliers,