It can sometimes take a while between a building being earmarked for demolition and the plunger being pushed, but rather than let this tower block in Paris’ 13th arrondisement rot, filmmaker Thomas Lallier set about coordinating a project immense in organisational and physical scale.
A total of 80 urban artists, including Parisian C215 and the UK’s own graffiti portraiture maestro David Walker, have been coaxed out of the shadows to participate in Tour Paris 13, set loose on 36 apartments across 10 floors, a basement and a sizeable exterior canvas. The project bears similarities to the Les Bains nightclub renovation from earlier this year, but with two key differences. Firstly, the building is open to the public for the duration of October, adding a degree of interaction with the viewer which the (admittedly impressive) virtual online tour can’t compete with.
The doors close at the end of this month, but the virtual exhibition will remain available for a further 10 days, which is where the second difference comes in: during the extension period there’s a chance to “save” the best of TP13’s works with mouse clicks, which will immortalise them on the internet after the big bang has reduced the real thing to rubble.
