Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

In Brazil, a developer named Albuquerque has been building "Alphavilles" since 1974: overprotected "model" urban enclaves, on the outskirts of big cities. A name directly inspired by Jean-Luc Godard's film Alphaville (1965), which shows a city controlled by an anxiety-inducing and absurd computer... How does the Alphaville of São Paulo resemble that of Godard? Is the planet being progressively covered with Alphavilles? Climate, urbanization, modernization, regionalism, and tourism are spatial cocktail ingredients, sometimes boring, sometimes very surprising. Where are the differences, where are the repetitions?
In his novel Aventuras de un fotógrafo en La Plata, Adolpho Bioy Casares follows a young man in this Argentine city created in 1882 according to an othogonal plan. An enormous grid, with some diagonals, in which the streets are simply numbered. However, even in this completely woven environment, the young photographer will live specific moments, and ABC's descriptions of photographic instants, recounting both the registered image and the constructed space, are very stimulating.
An area of New York is called "Alphabet City" because its streets carry the names of letters. In some big cities like Shanghai or Buenos Aires, the streets systemativally carry the names of other cities, superimposing faraway spaces while creating new proximities. - Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

A book of sentimental structure of architectural souvenirs gathered during various trips. A collection of images of cities and edificies in alphabetical order beginning with Acapulco-Agra-Albuquerque and ending in Zurich...

This book of images was published to accompagny the exhibitions "Multiverses" at the Kunsthalle Zürich (June,12  - August,15 2004) and "Alphavilles?" at deSingel, international arts centre, Anvtwerp (October, 14 - December, 19 2004).

Trilingual edition: English / German / French
Hardcover, 20,5 x 26,2 cm, 160 pp.
Solely colour illustrations
ISBN: 978-2-84066-126-9