Repaint/reinvent the town: Georges Rousse and Durham, NC

On Thursday I was fortunately able to attend a screening of Bending Space: Georges Rousse and the Durham Project, a documentary following the French artist as he spends a month creating installations in several vacant but soon-to-be transformed buildings in downtown Durham. The film, by Kenny Dalsheimer and Penelope Maunsell, is currently making a circuit of film festivals and has already been seen in fests from Missoula to Memphis. It will be available on DVD later this year, and I'm recommending it not because I have any affiliation with the artist or the filmmakers, but because it has captured the community spirit and reuse/recycling of space that make Durham an endlessly interesting place to live (and on a related note, Frank Konhaus and Ellen Cassilly, themselves two fabulous Durhamites, are responsible for inviting Rousse to Durham in the first place).

Viewing the installation through little wide-angle lenses

Folks waiting in line at the Liberty Warehouse site

If you're unfamiliar with Rousse's work, I'll try to describe it for you, but note that I'm not an expert in either art criticism or descriptive writing, so this is not the best possible synopsis: He builds installations on two-dimensional planes, mostly using paint (but has incorporated other materials as well), in order to create a three-dimensional shape that appears when he photographs the site using a wide-angle lens. As an example, here are two photos from the Bargain Furniture Building in Durham. On the left is the actual paint work done by Rousse and the project's many volunteers, and on the right is the same space from the exact location where he took his photos. Not an easy achievement!

During that very frenzied September, I was able to see almost all of the installations in downtown Durham, along with many hundreds of other interested folks (there were a total of seven installations at four sites, and I saw six of them). In the documentary Georges remarked on his surprise at the community's interest in seeing his work in person, as most people see it only in the form of finished photographs. I don't think it was only his projects that brought out the crowds, though.

For me, it was equally exciting to see the inside of these derelict buildings (for example, this is the first-floor ceiling at the Bargain Furniture site) that I pass by all the time as it was to view the art, especially because so many of them will be repurposed from their original forms soon, if that hasn't already happened. To review: the Chesterfield Building (which indeed churned out "the cigarette that satisfies" for decades until about 7 years ago; see my photos below) is part of the massive West Village multi-use project and the Baldwin Building, formerly Durham's largest department store, has been transformed into lofts (and if I'm not mistaken, a restaurant will be in the exact space of Rousse's installation). To my knowledge, the Liberty Warehouse (which served tobacco farmers and the companies that bought their crops) and Bargain Furniture sites still remain as they are, but that can certainly change. So I was glad to see his take on transforming space while getting a taste of Durham's history in the process.

Chesterfield Building's main entrance

Chesterfield plaque

Photos courtesy of Flickr user nats (blue dot at Bargain Furniture, and the deteriorating ceiling) and bunchofpants (folks viewing the Liberty Warehouse installation); Chesterfield photos mine