Fresque architecturale et urbaine @ Maison de l'Architecture Occitanie Méditerranée — Annonce du CIPAC

Overview

Maison de l'Architecture Occitanie Méditerranée invites an artist (illustrator, graphic designer, muralist, street artist, or architect interested in graphic design or illustration) to participate in a one-month in-situ urban and artistic residency creating an architectural and urban mural in the Aiguelongue neighborhood of Montpellier. The mural will be realized in the heart of Cité d'Aiguelongue, a mixed, popular neighborhood designated as a priority area for urban policy. The residency aims to accompany urban renewal processes with an alternative and cultural perspective, exploring the threshold between interior spaces (school, housing) and exterior public spaces. A proposed location is the wall of Sigmund Freud elementary school on rue des Tourelles.

Residency Structure

The one-month residency is divided into two phases. The first phase focuses on discovery, research, observation, and meetings with residents, school students, and local actors to anchor the work in its territory and create strong connections with users. During this phase, the artist will conduct interviews, gather readings and testimonies from the neighborhood, lead workshops with inhabitants and school students to involve them in the research and creation process. The second phase is devoted to mural creation, including all necessary technical aspects (permits, simulations, site preparation, scaffolding, protections).

Residency Objectives

• Inscribe a durable visual trace of the city, its imaginaries and transformations in public space
• Explore questions of gender and social peace in public space through the lens of Aiguelongue neighborhood
• Propose the mural as a mediation tool providing keys to understanding the neighborhood and its challenges
• Include residents, local actors, and students in the research and creation process

Artistic Output

The resident will produce a sensitive and visual memory of the city and neighborhood, which may take various artistic forms at the artist's discretion, including: sensory cartography, urban framework, narrative accounts of neighborhood transformations, urban sections proposing readings of different layers, prefiguration of the neighborhood's future, illustration or comics, mural or ground motifs. Format and artistic style are left to the free interpretation of the artist to preserve the experimental and creative dimension.