Introduction

'Diversion' and Other Stories

An Exhibition Project

‘Diversion’ and Other Stories is a series of 15 projects, for public buildings or outdoor spaces, presented in various ways (drawings, paintings, photographs...) and carried out under the direction of Jean-Luc Vilmouth and others. 

Some of these projects have already been carried out, others are still to be carried out, and some will probably never be carried out (e.g. the project for NASA, 1981). 

United for the first time within the framework of this exhibition, the compilation of all the projects allows for a confrontation that would have been impossible on a one-to-one scale. This confrontation places emphasis on the recent development of Jean-Luc Vilmouth's work. 

To show all these projects simultaneously means to unite them within a fictitious space, that of the exhibition. The project, like the exhibition, would be a kind of fiction. In fact, these projects could even be seen as stories. There is the story of the staircase winding around the palm tree, the story of the mill and the ferriswheel, the story of the hammer in space... Moreover, some of the projects bear the inscription of a story on their construction (the discovery of the first word on the granite of ‘Dossier: The Light Cage’, the haiku of the first island on the edge of the basin...).

To make a project come true means to tell a story at the same time; and stories can be told in a thousand different ways, such as with drawings (like a line on the water, Dossier: The Light Cage...) with paintings (Diversion, starting from an event...), photography (Discovery, The Pillars of Light) or with a light box (the NASA project). The various possibilities used in the narrative show, on the one hand, the versatility of the participants involved in the study of these projects and, on the other hand, the necessary collaboration between them. These projects report on the importance and need to consider the ‘site’ and the surrounding environment as a starting point. This starting point can be a palm tree, an air duct, a chimney, a tram or information linked to the site, e.g. an event occurring in situ, a memory of the site. Almost all these stories thus find their origin on the ‘site’ itself, either as a real element or as information.

At the same time, an echo, an extension, develops around this starting point. This construction, or entity, will allow the viewer to have certain experiences (climbing a palm tree, visiting a chimney, reading a spiraled text).