Patrice Balvay

Residency Program

Institutional Recommendation Program

update: 2019.10.24


Patrice Balvay

Participating ProjectInstitutional Recommendation Program
Activity BasedFrance
CityTokyo
Period2016.5 - 2016.6
Purpose of the residency

The «Drawing by Walking» project is to create and carry out thirty or so walks in the city of Tokyo and its suburbs, doing an entire survey of the megalopolis, and then to transpose these different pathways graphically.
I use a large format for doing drawing as a performance, until exhaustion. A large size of paper allows the viewer to become immersed in the drawing. Each drawing is an unlimited process. I set my pencil aside when I feel something is either disappearing or showing up My project in Tokyo is an opportunity to continue with this drawing work, using a different tool. Leaving the workshop becomes necessary in order for something else to arise.

Plan during the residency

My daily activity, which will last two months, is thus composed of two parts: a walk of several hours in the morning, during which a few notes can be taken, but without stopping. Then in the afternoon, for an equivalent duration of time, the creation of a drawing on a large sheet (1.5 x 1.5 m), which allows the amplitude of the arm to be accommodated, and at the same time imposes a certain limit. The drawing will come from the memory and the feeling of the walk, it will be a transcription of the energy deployed, of the rhythm used, an impression of the experience. The collection of drawings will thus represent a mapping of the city, an experience of it, through the senses. The experience of both travelling through a place and of this place travelling through us.

Creator Information

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