Eric Tabuchi & Nelly Monnier - ARN Vol. 4

L’Atlas des régions naturelles is a journey into the universe built by humans, but it is also a more intimate journey through time - through the almost contemporary ruins, sometimes instantaneous, of this same built environment, as well as the ruins of our ideologies and their accessories. It delves into the promises of the past, those of childhood, and its possible futures. We imagined them without limits, like that car bodyworker, a fine poet, who adorned his shop with the sign HORIZON 2000. The deadline, we imagined it so distant, inevitably futuristic. It shared with the horizon a taste for the infinite and hinted at the idea of progress for all, sprinkled with whimsy and vehicles suspended in the air. The Citroën BX, the car of the future, was one of its symbols, with its revolutionary hydropneumatic suspension promising an escape into unmatched comfort and aerodynamics, beyond the limits of our conditions back then. L’Atlas des régions naturelles volume 4, also opens with these few words that come like haikus to collide with our imaginations. RÉCICOURT, on the D603, ÉCLAIRES, 29 kilometers away taking the D65, and LE CHEMIN, a village of 56 souls in the Marne, near the great necropolises of the First World War. In 2023, the prestigious sedan has become a ruin. It lingers in the landscape, faded in color, rusted except for the plastic. Castaway from utopias. Promise unfulfilled. A little further on, amateur replicas of the Eiffel Tower stand, remnants or trophies of modernity from another century. What could have happened? Not a living soul, except for this strange couple, the man with slightly slanted eyes, and tanned skin, the woman with fair complexion, and abundant hair, eating crouched down in a parking lot not far from their Škoda.

Like each volume, the book is accompanied by a map as an index, inserted at the end of the volume.

Chapters of the fourth volume: Argonne, Bresse Bourguignonne, Champagne Berrichonne, Écussons, Crau, Flandre Maritime, Grand Ried, Garage, Minervois, Perthois, Plateau de Saint-André, Silos, Saintonge Romane, Vallespir, Velay, Eiffel Towers.

384 pages
17 x 32 cm
Book + Map
Co-edition by Poursuite and GwinZegal
May 2023
ISBN 978-2-490140-41-1

© Gwinzegal
© Poursuite