L'ABRI INUTILE
That is French for "the useless (bus) shelter."
This is in the parking lot at MACVAL, the contemporary art museum in the Val-de-Marne département on the Paris, France border. Located in the very weird Vitry-sur-Seine, you can get here by tramway. There are many new buildings, boxlike and without personality, there's a huge Asiatic community here, and it's kind of like something out of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.
Parking is free here. You take a ticket, a barrier lets you in, and you keep your ticket and validate it at the desk. When you leave, you give it back to a machine and a barrier lets you out. The "parking fee" device here is a dummy, and so is the mailbox, the clock, the useless light, the bike racks wouldn't work if you tried them, and the map boards show nothing at all, except for a single, red "you are here" indicator. Where are you? You are waiting for a bus which will never come, feeling reassured and protected.
This museum has interesting temporary installations and a good permanent show which does change anyway periodically, as does the entire inner space. It's not at all costly to get in, but we went on a first Sunday of the month, a "heritage day" in France when a heck of a lot of stuff is free, as this place always seems cheerful and interesting to us, whether or not we actually like any of the contemporary art. We usually like at least one thing here a lot, and I like to tease him with a little game after a show, asking if he could have one piece to enjoy for as long as he wanted, which would it be? We both admired a strange glassy type wall hanging in natural colors by a famous artist, and I loved a huge, garish, cynical painting titled BUSINESS MAN No. 6. There was a huge video display called AD NAUSEUM this visit, and I did get a clip of some of it and will probably post it, as you can take photos without flash here and make clips unless it is clearly specified you cannot. Vitry-sur-Seine is an odd mix of the mournful, bleak and modern as well as this happy, very strange, very large museum which is very welcoming.
Digital video recording, comments and annotations copyright 2014 Lisa B. Falour, B.S., M.B.A.
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