7 Walks (Rêveries d’un collectif de promeneurs)

Exhibition and five public walks by Vermeir & Heiremans in Louvain-la-Neuve (B)
09 – 26/10/2024

Pour la version francophone, cliquez ici

7 Walks (Rêveries d’un collectif de promeneurs) is a project on common goods – such as water, land and art – and the notion of their relations of property and governance by artist duo Vermeir & Heiremans in collaboration with Professor David Aubin (Political Science-UCLouvain) for the UCLouvain programme Fonds pour la Recherche-Création.

Exhibition and starting point of five public walks:
Learning Center Pasteur – BST – 1st floor Bibliothèque des sciences et technologies
Place L. Pasteur
Louvain-la-Neuve

Participation is free.
Language: French
Reservation required: info@jubilee-art.org

 

Programme of the walks

Walk#01 : PLURA DOMINIA

Wednesday 9 October 2-6 PM

Welcome by Ruth Kalf and Frédéric Brodkom at the BST – 1st floor

Introduction by Vermeir & Heiremans and David Aubin

Water cannot be separated from the landscape it has helped to create and which, in turn, shelters water. In 1969, the UCLouvain administration wondered how the construction of a new city and a university in the Malaise and Dyle valley would influence water management in the region. With David Aubin, we will explore the notion of plura dominia. The concept introduces the simultaneous use of the same resource, in this case water, by different entities. Plura Dominia could outline a possibility of collective governance of the aquatic landscape, but it also demonstrates how important it is to take into account the structuring role played by policies in regulating the use of natural resources.

 

Walk#02 : CARTOGRAPHIE ET CONTRE-CARTOGRAPHIE

Saturday 12 October 2-6 PM

Guest: Gaspard Geerts

The documents, maps, drawings and reliefs selected for the exhibition will provide a critical look at maps and their development, particularly in relation to the plans for the new city of LLN and the various sources of inspiration from the 19th century. The focus on the work of urban planners and alternative education advocates Patrick Geddes, Élisée Reclus, and the garden cities of Ebenezer Howard, have created radically different maps and counter-maps of the city and very different relationships with the topography of the site. During the walk, we will explore the city in relation to its proposed and executed plans.

 

Walk#03 : À LA RECHERCHE DU BASSIN FLUVIAL

Thursday 17 October 2-6 PM

Guests: Veerle Vanacker, Sophie Vanwambeke

Following Reclus’s advice to start working from the nearest river, we had hoped to begin our research with La Malaise, an affluent of the Dyle, but it disappeared under the huge concrete slab of the city centre. With Veerle Vanacker and Sophie Vanwambeke, and their students from the Integrated Project in Geography course, we want to explore the reliefs and plans of LLN. We travel through the basins of the rivers La Malaise, Blanc-Ry and Dyle, drawing on Geddes’ valley section model and Reclus’s hydrographical basin model to explore the complex dynamics between physical geography, geology and human systems.

 

Walk#04 : TRACING UTOPIA

Saturday 19 October 2-6 PM

Guest: Vincent Pourcelle

The preparatory plans (1968) and the Plan Directeur (1970) both reflect the utopian visions of the designers for the city of LLN. One of the ideals was to make a city on a human scale, a pedestrian city without cars, where people could meet. With Vincent Pourcelle, nature and urban guide, we will find and test the viability of the utopian traces that still exist today. Vincent has been working for some time with Gaspard Geerts on a map project for La Baraque, an experimental district that resists expropriation by UCL for over 50 years. This map, which puts vegetation in the foreground, is the counterpart of LLN’s initial urban planning projects.

 

Walk#05 : RELATIONS DE PROPRIÉTÉ ET BIEN PUBLIC 

Saturday 26 October 2-6 PM

Guests: Nicolas Bernard and Vincent Wattiez

LLN offers a unique case study in land governance. UCLouvain is the naked owner of the land. In the form of long-term leases of 99 years, and in exchange for a symbolic ground rent and an infrastructure fee, individuals or developers (who do not have to pay the price of the land) obtain the right to build on it. This form of ownership, quite exceptional in Belgium, separates the land from the buildings on it. This stratification of land ownership allows UCLouvain to retain control of the land, but could it also contain speculation?

We will address these questions with Nicolas Bernard who will share his expertise on the pros and cons of the long-term lease and his knowledge of alternative property relations.

We will also talk with Vincent Wattiez, a resident of La Baraque, who cooperated in the participatory process of developing a decree on light housing (habitat léger). Drawing on local and international housing initiatives, he is studying, with the RBDL, ways to challenge the relationship between property and speculation. Can alternative forms of housing and direct democracy applied to the alternative neighbourhood of La Baraque inspire other forms of property that would better protect the general interest and the social function of housing?

 

Collaborators and partners

For this project we enjoyed the privilege of working first and foremost with David Aubin, Professor of political science-UCLouvain, with Ruth Kalf bibliothécaire en cartothèque, and Frédéric Brodkom, director, both at the Bibliothèque des sciences et technologies

And with following archives and their collaborators:

Véronique Fillieux, Le Service des Archives de l’UCLouvain

Groupe des Archives de la Baraque, Archives de la Baraque

Flore Guiot, Réserve patrimoniale et précieuse des bibliothèques de l’UCLouvain

Irene Lund, Archives de la faculté d’architecture de l’ULB (“La Cambre architecture”)

Marlou de Bont, Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library, Antwerp

Benoît Van Calbergh, City archives of Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve

David Aubin is professor of political science at the School of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve. He teaches on public policy analysis and evaluation. Aubin is conducting research on the comparative analysis of environmental policy, and the use of expertise and knowledge in the policy process.

Nicolas Bernard is a Doctor of Law and a graduate in philosophy. He specializes in the right to housing and tenancy law. He was appointed professor of property law at the Saint-Louis University in Brussels.

Gaspard Geerts is a 2018 graduate of La Cambre Horta Faculty of Architecture at the Free University of Brussels. He devoted his dissertation to the alternative neighbourhood of La Baraque in Louvain-la-Neuve, where he was born and has lived until 2013. Since September 2018, he is coordinator of design, research and project management projects at Rotor, a cooperative design practice.

Vincent Pourcelle has a scientific background. He is a nature guide interested in the city as a natural space in its own right. By combining scientific and artistic approaches, the nature walks he organises seek to take a fresh look at our environment.

Veerle Vanacker is Professor of Geomorphology at the School of Geography at UCLouvain. Working on human-environment interactions, her research focuses on the impact of global change on continental physical environments.

Sophie Vanwambeke is a professor at the School of Geography and Earth and Life Sciences at UCLouvain. She works on spatial interactions between human societies and their environment, and in particular on the relationship between the environment and health.

Vincent Wattiez is coordinator of the Brabant Network for the Right to Housing at the Centre Culturel du Brabant Wallon (RBDL). He is a member of the Halé collective.
Practical

Exhibition

Learning Center Pasteur – BST – 1st floor Bibliothèque des sciences et technologies
Place L. Pasteur
Louvain-la-Neuve
Open to the public on weekdays during library opening hours

Five public walks

Starting point: Learning Center Pasteur – BST – 1st floor
Participation is free.
Language: French
Reservation required: info@jubilee-art.org.

 

7 Walks (Rêveries d’un collectif de promeneurs) was produced by Jubilee, an artistic research platform and with the support of the Fonds pour la Recherche-Création of UCLouvain.