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Lettrism is a French avant-garde movement, established in Paris in the mid-1940s by Romanian immigrant Isidore Isou. In a body of work totaling hundreds of volumes, Isou and the Lettrists have applied their theories to all areas of art and culture, most notably in poetry, film, painting and political theory. The movement has its theoretical roots in Dada and Surrealism. Isou viewed his fellow countryman Tristan Tzara as the greatest creator and rightful leader of the Dada movement, and dismissed most of the others as plagiarists and falsifiers. Among the Surrealists, André Breton was a significant influence, but Isou was dissatisfied by what he saw as the stagnation and theoretical bankruptcy of the movement as it stood in the 1940s. In French, the movement is called Lettrisme, from the French word for letter, arising from the fact that many of their early works centred on letters and other visual or spoken symbols. The Lettristes themselves prefer the spelling 'Letterism' for the Anglicised term, and this is the form that is used on those rare occasions when they produce or supervise English translations of their writings: however, 'Lettrism' is at least as common in English usage. The term, having been the original name that was first given to the group, has lingered as a blanket term to cover all of their activities, even as many of these have moved away from any connection to letters. But other names have also been introduced, either for the group as a whole or for its activities in specific domains, such as 'the Isouian movement', 'youth uprising', 'hypergraphics', 'creatics', 'infinitesimal art' and 'excoördism'. 1925. Isidore Goldstein was born at Botoșani, Romania, on 31 January, to an Ashkenazi Jewish family. During the early 1950s, Goldstein would be signing himself 'Jean-Isidore Isou'; otherwise, it was always 'Isidore Isou'. 'Isou' was normally taken to be a pseudonym, but Isou/Goldstein himself resisted this interpretation. My name is Isou. My mother called me Isou, only it's written differently in Romanian.

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Lettrism

Art movement

An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined within a number of years. Art movements were especially important in modern art, when each consecutive movement was considered a new avant-garde movement. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality (figurative art).

Anti-art

Anti-art is a loosely used term applied to an array of concepts and attitudes that reject prior definitions of art and question art in general. Somewhat paradoxically, anti-art tends to conduct this questioning and rejection from the vantage point of art. The term is associated with the Dada movement and is generally accepted as attributable to Marcel Duchamp pre-World War I around 1914, when he began to use found objects as art. It was used to describe revolutionary forms of art.

Compendium infrastructurel. Réouverture de la Petite Ceinture de Paris: un parcours public insolite (F)

Simon Pracchinetti, Sébastien Camillo

Nous nous sommes intéressés aux vides urbains accompagnant les anciennes gares de la ligne de la Petite Ceinture de Paris, aujourd'hui désaffectée et propice à la promenade urbaine. Notre proposition consiste à offrir deux types d'usages complémentaires fonctionnant en alternance et reproductibles le long de la ligne. Pour le projet, nous nous sommes penchés sur la possibilité de relier deux parcs bordant la gare de Vaugirard dans le XVe. Le premier usage jouit de l'espace le jour. Il est dédié à l'expression de la culture urbaine. Il est lié à la ville et offre un pôle d'attraction sociale que les gens peuvent s'approprier en lui donnant vie. Le second usage en profite la nuit en reprenant la fonction première de la ligne qui est le transport de fret léger. Des navettes électriques relient les différents ports francs, devenus centres de distribution, et assurent la pérennité économique des vides urbains existants. Les deux usages se matérialisent dans un projet unitaire formé d'un élément architectural fort et d'un élément complétant l'infrastructure existante de la Petite Ceinture. Ensemble, ils définissent la place dans sa globalité. Le premier élément, le ruban en béton, est étudié afin qu'il intègre les typologies de dalle, de toiture, de mur, puis de tunnel, en définissant d'un seul geste une séquence spatiale entre une place minérale, un parquet et des espaces de représentations scéniques et graphiques. Le second élément, le soulèvement de la place, propose un skate-park ainsi qu'un belvédère. Il abrite un espace couvert de marché, un café et un accès au port franc situé au-dessous.

2015