Plein Vent, Halle aux Sucres

October 19, 2019 – September 20, 2020
Public opening October 19th 16:00-19.00

Curator: Lauranne Germond and Phoebe-Lin Elnan – COAL and the Learning Center Ville durable – Halle aux Sucres | Communauté urbaine de Dunkerque

There are invisible and evanescent things which are nevertheless the multi-millennial pillars of our world, origins of the universe and foundations of the night of times. Perceived in cultures as the cosmic breath that gives life and creates movement, intermediary between heaven and earth, the wind is this subtle force that governs time and directs space… to the four winds. It is the engine of the great terrestrial mechanics, which gives birth to the tides, to the climate, which allows the dissemination and the reproduction of the plants, and which, by the evaporation and the erosion, draws our landscapes by shaping the lightest clouds like the highest mountains.

Invisible but omnipresent, as dangerous as it is powerful, the wind has participated in the construction of human societies that have gradually made it an ally to develop and build their activities. At the source of music, sailing and human leisure, in a relationship of cooperation between natural force and cultural development, the wind is the basis of transportation, energy, the conquest of territories as well as wars.

Today, our industrial and post-industrial urban imagination has turned its back on the wind. But the imperatives of climate change call on us to return to it. As the first stone of the first offshore wind farm in France is laid off our coasts, it becomes necessary to reconnect to these natural and infinite forces, to rediscover this culture of the wind and to grasp all the stakes.

Through works of art, scientific projects, historical archives, visual and sound installations, this exhibition crosses the cultural, technical and symbolic history of the wind, from yesterday to today, to give a new breath to tomorrow in this providential place of the wind that is Dunkirk.

With the artists :

European Space Agency
Archives of Dunkerque – Center of the Urban Memory of the Agglomeration
EDF Renewables
FRAC Grand Large
Institute of Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety
Laboratory of Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry, Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale
Port Museum of Dunkerque
Soufflerie de Nantes, Centre scientifique et technique du bâtiment,
The SeaCleaners

PRACTICAL INFORMATION
Halleaux sucres
9003 Route du quai Freycinet 3
59140 Dunkerque

October 19, 2019 – September 20, 2020
Open from Tuesday to Saturday
10:00 – 19:00
www.halleauxsucres.fr

PARTNERS

Plein vent is realized thanks to the support of the Urban Community of Dunkerque

Image credit:

Cover © Li Wei, Sail, 2016, Cottesloe, Australia – Design: www.referent.cc
Exhibition images ©COAL, ©HAS/Olivier Thomas, ©Ronan Lecreurer