
The particular, symbolic value of the action, made it become an extremely violent scenario, heavily hitting the city and its new representatives and supporters, provoking the destruction of monuments with political charge, the creation of barricades, and the spread of summery executions. Scenes of this sort of small scale civil war are now being repurposed in an interesting project developed by Raspouteam collective, which mixes techniques of street art, interaction, and broadcast of historical information through digital media in a smart way.
The project presents a series of interventions in what it considers to be the key places to understand the experience of the Paris Commune — images related to the event are pasted on the walls and an accompanying QR code links us to a website where the history of the Commune is presented. But what is most interesting is that the action happens in real time — the information related to a certain event is published the same day in which the event was historically registered, with of course exactly 140 years of delay. The presentation of a real-time, site-specific historical chronicle of facts happened in the city is a clever way of merging guerrilla techniques, mobile web technologies and at the same time a tribute to the press, as the information is nostalgically brought to us under the shape of a web-based illustrated journal.
Raspouteam seems to be familiar both with historical happenings and QR codes — their previous project Désordres Publics also involved a series of QR codes glued on white tiles in Paris, which where placed at key spots of famous social disorders that once happened in the city. We can imagine that, between French Revolution, Paris Commune, May 68 and more recent happenings, Paris should be filled with codes, that provide open, accessible pieces of the history of the city. An interview with the authors is available here (in French).
In collaboration with Unlocked, we explore the future of hybrid space and how the cultural sector and events industry can reap the benefits of this new urban frontier in the post-COVID city.
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