Dark Line. Mind the gap by Françoise Crémel

Detached island, a place that grounds a floating offering.
Taiwan looks down at its green hills, whispers into its deep gorges, a landscape that the inhabitants color with buildings, symbols, and shrill banners. By intercepting the scenery, it is a way to insert oneself into the memories of all scenes. It is wild. The project manifests an ambition; an iron infrastructure is emerging. A scratch in the landscape, an anthropomorphic beast at the scale of streams and mountains. This earthiness reverberates throughout the figures transmitted by agile fingers in glove puppets of ancient times.

The space here is poetic, with rhythms that fragment the kinetics of the enclosed volume.

The Dark Line by Michèle & Miquel and dA VISION DESIGN. Photograph by LU Yu-Jui, Michèle & Miquel.

The transitions offer a simultaneous sense of excitement and terror for what’s to come: spiritualizing removed passages, long deployments exuding a slight fright, and short moments of trajectory dislocation.

No horizon, no boredom, just a ring road and a loose call.

The line is struck by the hammering of the material, no guardrail, just peering over the border towards an expectant discovery. Moving then still the body seizes a visual vibration that causes the pedestrian to be suspended in the surrounding environment. Rich, it drips with plants, fertile and luxurious vegetation. Speed is mitigated. The lateral world can slip, crumble, collapse: standing there, I'm vigilant, whatever it may do and who passes by.  I visit the place stunned by the matter suddenly alive.


The Dark Line by Michèle & Miquel and dA VISION DESIGN. Photograph by LU Yu-Jui, Michèle & Miquel.

This path is an orthosis, for the body of some and for the range of groups of people that this development involves between construction and erosion. Metaphorically a journey, it is the immobility that garners the gaze towards the unfinished. Steps are gradually revealed in the light at the beginning of the tunnel, or further on, around a curve. Reaching out, without grasping anything, exposes the accident and the derailment of the railroad. The railroad is still a railroad. Iron, a solid element, pugnacious - a bark that sounds metallic - like footsteps that drum and resonate, the lightness of a tire squeaking on the edge of the rail, attention.  Nevertheless, it's the bearer of all our fragilities. Catching a glimpse of the flower cluster during a loss of control, light, sublime before the fall; that, rough, on this faceless ground.


The Dark Line by Michèle & Miquel and dA VISION DESIGN. Photograph by LU Yu-Jui, Michèle & Miquel.

In the night, some will reassure themselves, throwing stones to try the echo from below. The sound, a great companion of shadow and depth, will give the exchanged words the appearance of a pledge. Something other than a support for stumbling steps, this great footbridge puts a garment on the nakedness of the hill. From below, humidity competes with mist through intestinal movements that break with temperatures and climate. No more distant landscapes, just a pungent smell of the earth, permeated by water and falling pebbles. With an abundance of scents, unconsciousness ensues in the rhythms of the sequences. The actual distance commands respect from the plant elements, which, too green, singe the lungs of the passerby.


The Dark Line by Michèle & Miquel and dA VISION DESIGN. Photograph by LU Yu-Jui, Michèle & Miquel.

No one anticipated this post-industrial.

A few images caught on the internet, a few words from the landscapists after an expedition, my body was never exposed to that wind, and I did not touch anything of this place.

My sentences here and there just convey the ability of the lines to make promises.

May the rain bring children like me to rest on the ground; as a result of this invitation to explore.