A partnership between HÔTEL DU NORD, ANCRAGES, HÖFN, and the artist Irena Übler
... a beautiful collaboration... which starts with the artist designer Irena Ăśbler,
not in Marseille, not in France, with no connection whatsoever with the 3 mentionned associations and cooperative …
It is, to begin with, the story of a meeting, in 2012, between Irena Ăśbler, half Austrian, half German and the industrial city: GuimarĂŁes, (North of Portugal).
GuimarĂŁes, in 2012 is European Capital of Culture. It is there and then that Irena Ăśbler will build up her project: "Descobrir GuimarĂŁes".
This is how she describes her approach : " Find Your Guimarães has been developed within the framework of an academic research project that explores creative tourism from an Industrial Design perspective. It offers a case study for small- and medium-sized cities regarding the role of Industrial Design in transformation of traditional urban structures and promotion of heritage assets, by analysing the connection between culture, art and the landscape.
As she walks around the town, as she understands more and more about it, meeting all kind of people,
Irena Ăśbler, little by little, knows GuimarĂŁes more and more intimately,
multiplies points of view, follows hidden paths, beyond any known tourist trail,
learns about the City History, and listens to very many stories about it.
It will allow her to define various routes through the City ( a special map will be later offered to the visitors ),
but she has to find a way to mark specific spots along the streets, passages, lanes and back alleys she has discovered...
and wants to be discovered by many more...
Irena Ăśbler, in Portugal, cannot ignore, since the XVIIIth century, the important, decorative but also meaningful place of the azulejos in this country,
on fronts of houses or inside buildings, prestigious or not, secular or sacred.
She will rely (and refer to) this tradition and heritage to define her own signage system,
and thus, collaborating with local craftsmen, researchers and factories,
will create many different modern azulejos, original tiles with specific drawings, shapes, reliefs, made out of various materials
which all point out the peculiar aspects of the spots they will mark (whether the area has got an historical dimension,
an intense nowdays artistic and cultural life, an industrial past, a forgotten heritage, or could offer a concealed and wild verdant space...)
During 2012, already, secretly, some tiles will leave the place they are born in : Guimarães.
Indeed a lot of them have not been used.
They have been widely spread across the town which made them appear, each of them duly chosen according to the area they underline...
... but these tiles, created originally in and for GuimarĂŁes, may have a range and a significance far beyond the borders of this sole town...
They will one step at a time appear here and there in Europe, Russia, USA, South America, Vietnam (...),
in the course of Irena Ăśbler's travels, thanks to her encounters, friendships and partnerships, wherever one or the other will go ...
Irena Ăśbler will actually place her first tile beyond GuimarĂŁes in Marseille, at ... LA FRICHE DE LA BELLE DE MAI, in June 2012...
You may still find it next to the restaurant Les Grandes Tables, (at the corner of its terrace, just above the skate park).
In 2013, as Marseille is then European Capital of Culture, Irena Übler runs into HÔTEL DU NORD
Nothing surprising about it, considering how much the artist's train of thought and process is closed to the founding principles, experience and experiments of the cooperative.
Nathalie Cazals, who is its coordinator, organises contact between Dominique Poulain, our HĂ–FN association's coordinator , and Irena Ăśbler in May 2013.
This first meeting will allow Dominique Poulain to get acquainted with the project "Descobrir GuimarĂŁes",
as much as realise its geographical extending, an impetus perfectly conveyed with this stimulating sentence, at the heart of Irena Übler's approach :
BETTER NOT STOP MOVING (!)
Irena Übler will apprehend better the HÔTEL DU NORD cooperative goals, hopes and actions,
and both appreciate at once the obvious link between the marking of a special area, bearing History and/or plenty of stories with contemporary tiles, meaningful prints,
AND the heritage « treasure hunts » between Past and Present that HÔTEL du NORD, again and again, here, and there, develop with its urban walks;
MORE... a specific territory seems at once the right one:
in English, "tiles", the word that Irena uses talking about her signage items means as much : ceramic slabs on the walls of a kitchen, on the floor or the ground inside or outside a house, as... roof tiles...
Dominique Poulain, our HĂ–FN coordinator on one hand,
joins, creates and photographes many HÔTEL DU NORD walks as a member of the cooperative on the other hand.
Among the many heritage walks that HÔTEL DU NORD offered within the MARSEILLE-PROVENCE 2013 programme,
one in peculiar is based on the industrial History of the Tileries: L’USINE DES FRERES MARTIN, UNE TUILERIE FABRIQUE DE L’URBAIN,
(THE MARTIN BROTHER'S TILE FACTORY, A TILE FACTORY CREATES AN URBAN LANDSCAPE),
within and around the Saint André district (16th arrondissement in Marseilles) that still shows remains of the whole life around a Tilery.
The association ANCRAGES ('HÔTEL DU NORD member and partner, as HÖFN is),
by way of Samia Chabani 's researches and work – Samia is ANCRAGES director- has developed this walk
which recounts the rise and end of the Martin Brother's tile factory ( from 1830 to 1979),
which indeed gave the district its tempo and pattern, shaped its urbanisation,
and induced several waves of immigration : Italian, Spanish, Armenian, Algerian, Kabyle, Senegalese...
Walking through the Saint André district, with Samia Chabani as a guide, one can still see the « Ecole des Soeurs » (The Sister's School), (rue Jean Labro),
which was one of the very Christian -and rich- Martin Family's charity (as the Saint André Church),
the Martin family's Mansion ( The Émilienne), the house of the tileries' foreman,
but also tiny streets, dead ends actually, like the impasse Rey, which confronts us with the kind of habitat the tileries' workers used to build for themselves and live in.
(Former tileries' workers' widow and daugter in law still live there to-day).
The very day they meet for the first time (the 20th of May 2013),
Dominique Poulain invites Irena Übler to experience a first short exploration at Saint André and its surroundings....
And... Irena Ăšbler leaves Marseille (To-day, she speaks Portuguese an lives in... Portugal!),
not without letting Dominique get one of her tile, perfectly fitting the area they just strode along,
thinking that the HÔTEL DU NORD cooperative, ANCRAGES may be, HÖFN for sure, will seize this « offering » and include it somewhere in Saint André...
The idea gains ground on both sides...
HÖFN contacts ANCRAGES, quite ready to play a central part in an artistic and cultural collaboration with the artist Irena Ûbler ...
Irena Ăśbler and Dominique Poulain exchange lots of messages (!)...
Irena lets Dominique know that she will be again in Marseille in December, presenting there and then her project "Descobrir GuimarĂŁes",
its development and spreading throughout the world and her book" BETTER NOT STOP MOVING",
the 12th of December 2013, at the Atelier 72 ( 8 rue Vian, 13006 Marseille).
At that point, it seems right, and URGENT for HÖFN to try and invite Irena Übler experience an ANCRAGES programed walk in Saint André as she is staying (for a short while!) in Marseille...
The walk L’USINE DES FRERES MARTIN, UNE TUILERIE FABRIQUE DE L’URBAIN, that ANCRAGES has developed
is part of a special exhibition, Marseille, rivages et produits du monde (Marseille, shores and products from all over the world)
that the ARCHIVES DÉPARTEMENTALES des BOUCHES DU RHÔNE have organised the 11th et 14th of December 2013.
Alas! Irena, preparing the presentation of her project "Descobrir GuimarĂŁes" at the Atelier 72, cannot join us the 11th...
BUT Dominique will accompany Samia Chabani, and her group of walkers that day,
and take, once more,(!) lots of photos, focusing on buildings, places, people in connection with the History of the tile factories, and related spots where Irena's tiles could be relevant and noticeable.
She will select the most pertinent images and send them to Irena.
Here this little illustrated journey:
...Finally, the 13th of December, at ANCRAGES office,
Samia Chabani, Irena Ăśbler and Dominique Poulain will meet,
experiencing then a clarifying, enriching and fruiful discussion for each and all of them,
and organising how the following day walk would as always feature the heritage of the SĂ©on Basin tile factories
(embracing the Saint Henri, the Estaque and the Saint André areas)
but also bring out the link with Irena Ăśbler's heritage and artistic gesture, which first jelled in GuimarĂŁes,
go on all over the world, transiting through Marseille, and the village looking district of Saint André...
… a process that was depicted the 14th of December in front of 40 persons sharing the urban walk
L’USINE DES FRERES MARTIN, UNE TUILERIE FABRIQUE DE L’URBAIN, in the presence of the artist,
ending with the placing of an azulejo at the foot of a (miraculously preserved!!) tilery chimney vestige,
standing to-day at the hedge of a small housing estate called... lotissement LesTuileries.
A bit later, before leaving Marseille for good, Irena Ăśbler followed again the same path,
chose and marked knowingly some other spots she had noticed while « walking the walk » the first time.
Let's hope that they will bear those signs for a long time, as long as possible
in order to arouse curiosity, questions and memory in passing travellers, inhabitants and workers across this district...
The 14th of December 2013... in pictures...
The Saint-André Church On the Square, the walkers around Samia Chabani
Old Saint André cadastral plans are shown The walkers, now in Traverse Rey discover what was the tilery worker's housing
One may still see the remnant of the shared privy, washing place and water tank Incarnation, a tilery worker's widow, still living there to-day
formerly used by Italian and Spanish workers
The entrance of one of the little « house » in the Traverse Rey Few meters from the Traverse Rey, a wall along a street
that the first Piedmontese workers built for themselves "tells" us a lot about the Time of Tileries...
in need of a roof over their head
The Saint André Churchyard Left, the artist Irena Übler, Right, her cousin Carina who played perfectly her role as a translator
At the back, one can see the top of what was the Martin family's mansion
Above this wall that Irena Übler will «mark» later, L'ÉMILIENNE" has been bought once more and is used to-day as a public accountants' office.
another point of view on the Martin family's «ÉMILIENNE» The owner opens its door generously and regularly to Samia Chabani and «her» walkers.
As in many Marseille mansions, the rich Martin family appealed for the Italian « rocailleurs' » savoir-faire in their garden......
Splendour is displayed everywhere outside, here on the left side of the mansion what could resemble the Marquis de Foresta's castle...
Forgotten in the garden, some old tiles. Getting out of the Martin Family estate, on the other side of the street, just in front of us,
what was very probably the foreman's house.
An old document, used to glamourize a building style Further away, following a long and narrow street,
where clay bricks, tiles and ornamentst had a place of honour. again walls buit up with layers of salvaged tiles and bricks
Was the foreman's house ALSO some kind of an advertising?
At the end of this yard, the dairy wide entrance, It is almost the end of the walk when we get to the "Chemin du Littoral",
the annexe of a local farm which supplied milk which reminds us the necessary link between
for the Tileries' workers and the local Hospital the tile factories and THE SEA...
The still visible pillars that flanked once upon a time Soon arrived near the small housing estate "Les Tuileries"
the majestuous entrance of the Martin Brothers' tilery along a fly tipping site...
... a fly tipping site where, inevitably, one finds remains of tiles, some abviously very old...
Samia Chabani (ANCRAGES Association) and Irena Ăśbler present the artist's work in connection with the walk (it is actually its final point)
in front of a tilery chimney remains at the edge of the housing estate: "Les Tuileries".
The tile is soon to be glued at the foot of the chimney vestige, on a low wall close by.
The Artist, the Chimney, the Tile. THE "azulejo" that Irena Ăśbler chose in and for this specific background
Here, an Irena Ăśbler's record about this little adventure: files/documentirenaubler.pdf
... and all the links which will allow you to know more about her work: her homepage, Descobrir GuimarĂŁes , and the map of Irena Ăśbler's travel signs around the world