Tower 13 | |
---|---|
Alternative names | Paris Tower 13 |
General information | |
Status | Demolished |
Location | Paris, France |
Address | 5 rue Fulton, Paris |
Town or city | Paris |
Country | France |
Coordinates | 48°50′18″N2°22′19″E / 48.8384°N 2.3719°E |
Construction started | 1950s |
Demolished | 2013 |
Tower 13 (French : Tour 13), also known as Paris Tower 13 (French : Tour Paris 13) was a building used for an ephemeral street art exhibition in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, France. [1] The conversion of the building into a street art exhibition began in September 2013 and ended on October 31, 2013, after which the building was officially evacuated prior to demolition.
Built in the 1950s and finished in 1960, Tower 13 was originally a 10-story brick and cement residential building in a low-income housing project. It was scheduled to be demolished in early 2014, as part of a broader urban renewal project. [1] [2] The building was located in Paris' 13th arrondissement on the banks of the Seine.
Mehdi Ben Cheikh, who learned of Tower 13's planned demolition because he lived in the surrounding neighbourhood of Paris, is a Tunisian-born art teacher and founder of the Galerie Itinerrance. [3]
Recognising the potential of the building as a venue for hosting street artists, he obtained the rights for an art exhibition in the tower as part of a collaboration with Jérôme Coumet, the mayor of the 13th arrondissement of Paris. The plan was to "invite well known urban artists to create a collective open air museum." [1] Cheikh spent six months recruiting 80 street artists from 18 countries to decorate the interior and exterior of the building. [1] [4] [5] This process would ultimately convert the building's entire10 stories into works of art, doomed to destruction. [6]
Cheikh stated that the project had "absolutely no commercial aspect". Offers from art collectors to purchase pieces from the exhibition were rejected because the works were to be displayed as "true art, not decoration for the home or for magazines." [1]
Notable artists who worked on Tower 13 include EL Seed, A1one, Guy Denning, C215, 108, and Add Fuel. [7] The artists did not receive financial compensation, and were required to pay for their own travel expenses and materials. [1] Work on the Tower 13 exhibition began in March 2013. [4] At the time, several tenants still refused to leave the building. [4]
Over the course of seven months the artists created more than 4,500 square feet (420 m2) of art and completely painted 36 apartments. The façades and entry areas were also painted. [2] [4]
The exhibition was opened to the public for the month of October 2013. [1] [4] Admission was free, and only 49 visitors were allowed inside the building at once due to safety concerns. [1] [4] Because of this constraint, waiting times were routinely upwards of several hours and could extend to the entire day. Many visitors started queuing in the early hours of the morning. The role of social media in creating this exceptional exhibition makes Tour 13 a case study in how such media can amplify social phenomena. [8]
The exhibit attracted 30,000 visitors during its one-month duration.
After the exhibit closed on 31 October 2013, the demolition process began. [4] All of the artwork in the building was destroyed in this process, though purchase offers had been made. The demolition used the technique of grignotage, which involves the deployment of specialised machinery to bring down the building slowly, without recourse to explosives.
Before the demolition, artworks at Tower 13 were documented in social media (e.g. on Instagram at #tourparis13) and web formats. [9] [10] [11] [12] Tower 13 was the subject of a 2014 documentary film showcasing the artwork and artists. [3] [5] Mehdi Ben Cheikh wrote two books documenting the experience (see Bibliography below).
Montparnasse is an area in the south of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. It is split between the 6th, 14th, and 15th arrondissements of the city. Montparnasse has been part of Paris since 1669.
The 17th arrondissement of Paris is one of the 20 arrondissements of the capital city of France. In spoken French, it is referred to as le dix-septième.
The 15th arrondissement of Paris is one of the 20 arrondissements of the capital city of France. In spoken French, it is referred to as le quinzième.
Leonard Hilton McGurr, known as Futura, and formerly known as Futura 2000, is an American contemporary artist and former graffiti artist.
Champ de Mars–Tour Eiffel station is a station on RER C in Paris named for the nearby Champ de Mars and Eiffel Tower.
The Square du Temple is a garden in Paris, France in the 3rd arrondissement, established in 1857. It is one of 24 city squares planned and created by Georges-Eugène Haussmann and Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand. The Square occupies the site of a medieval fortress in Paris, built by the Knights Templar. Parts of the fortress were later used as a prison during the French Revolution, and then demolished by the mid-19th century.
Nicolas Schöffer was a Hungarian-born French cybernetic artist. Schöffer was born in Kalocsa, Hungary and lived in France from 1936 until his death in Montmartre, Paris in 1992.
Dailymotion is a French online video sharing platform owned by Vivendi. North American launch partners included Vice Media, Bloomberg, and Hearst Digital Media. It is among the earliest known platforms to support HD (720p) resolution video. Dailymotion is available worldwide in 183 languages and 43 localised versions featuring local home pages and local content.
Henri Sauvage was a French architect and designer in the early 20th century. He was one of the most important architects in the French Art Nouveau movement, Art Deco, and the beginning of architectural modernism. He was also a pioneer in the construction of public housing buildings in Paris. His major works include the art nouveau Villa Majorelle in Nancy, France and the art-deco building of the La Samaritaine department store in Paris.
Guillaume Bottazzi is a French visual artist.
Tourism in Paris is a major income source. Paris received 12.6 million visitors in 2020, measured by hotel stays, a drop of 73 percent from 2019, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of foreign visitors declined by 80.7 percent. Museums re-opened in 2021, with limitations on the number of visitors at a time and a requirement that visitors wear masks.
The Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon is a museum devoted to contemporary art, located in the 6th arrondissement of Lyon, in the Cité Internationale, next to the cinema, in front of the Parc de la Tête d'Or. It had over 42,000 visitors in 2007.
C215 is the moniker of Christian Guémy, a French street artist hailing from Paris who has been described as "France's answer to Banksy".
eL Seed, is a French Tunisian calligraphy artist and muralist, whose work feature the Arabic language through graffiti.
Elizabeth de Portzamparc is a French-Brazilian architect.
Saâdane Afif is a French conceptual artist.
Djerbahood was a street art event in which artists from all over the world gathered in the village of Erriadh on the Tunisian island Djerba to create 250 mural paintings. The project was established by the Itinerrance de Paris gallery in June 2014.
The 136 museums in the city of Paris display many historical, scientific, and archeological artifacts from around the world, covering diverse and unique topics including fashion, theater, sports, cosmetics, and the culinary arts.
The Place Jean-Michel Basquiat is a public square located in the 13th arrondissement of Paris. It is named after American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who emerged from the New York graffiti scene in the late 1970s before becoming the leading artist of the neo-expressionism movement of the 1980s.