7 Walks (Rêveries d’un collectif de promeneurs)
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. It is part of the walking practice 7 Walks, which has been ongoing since 2019, by artist duo Vermeir & Heiremans in collaboration with Professor David Aubin (Political Science-UCLouvain) for the UCLouvain programme Fonds pour la Recherche-Création. In this installment they are also looking at cartography from an alternative pedagogical angle.
Read the programme booklet here, with introduction, programme, credits and participants’ biographies
Read an interview with Vermeir & Heiremans here, published in Traces, the cultural newspaper of UCLouvain (in French)
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
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.