Le Grand Livre de Paris at the Grand Palais, Paris

Le Grand Livre de Paris: La Cartography du Spectacle by Aprille Best Glover is an installation/book that explores the boundary between a book and a sculpture. In its large scale and choice of structural materials, such as wood and metal, the project is closer to an installation piece yet by retaining sequential paging and interior use of paper, it can still be read as a “book”.

Thematically the project is about Paris; Paris as geographic entity, Paris as a city of books, Paris as the natural habitat of the flaneur, Paris as a tourist icon, Paris as home to its current inhabitants.

As an artwork it is highly interactive. Although the project is a single book, it is a series of volumes that interlock in a grid-like fashion on the floor. The volumes are artist-manipulated maps and ephemera circa 2010 collected by the artist. Not only are the spectators able to walk over the piece, they are able, with the assistance of the artist, to remove individual volumes for reading and even adding their own impressions and memories of Paris to the work.

This post is also available in: French