Asterion City

Asterion City is an ongoing collaborative project with artist Eve Marguerite that probes the depth of nihilism, and explores myth, urban development and design.As artists, it challenges us in new directions of research and making within our individual practices. 

The city will exist temporarily as a painstakingly-thorough model of a circular city in miniature. The buildings rise in height toward the centre of the city and give way to slums and industrial areas in the outer regions.

The project culminates in a film: the conflagration of the city. The planned 6-foot- diameter model city will fill with smoke, flame and ultimately crumble, reduced to ash.

Asterion City: Inauguration

Pledge #24. CITY MAP #1 

26 January 2012 

Islington Mill, James Street, Salford

The Asterion City project was inaugurated as part of a group show at the Manchester Artists annual Bon Fire held in early 2012 at the Islington Mill near Manchester, England. The Bon Fire provided an opportunity for artists to reflect a range of emotions—but this fire offered us the perfect initiator context for this project. Several weeks before the blaze, we developed a pledge—and made a promise to the project. “Destruction by fire: a launch pad to a new trajectory!” We burnt our plans—or more specifically an approximately four foot, folding, road map of Asterion City. This was the first representation and plan for the project to come, painstakingly hand drawn over the course of several weeks. With the thoughts of our pledge echoing in our minds, we cast our road map into the fire with the hope that this sacrifice would breathe life into the new project.

Pledge:

In the essay ‘How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later’, science fiction writer Philip K. Dick confessed that he liked to create universes that fall apart, in order to see how his characters would adapt to change.

CITY MAP #1 is a new piece created for burning. What initially seems full of dark intent, we wish to announce as an inaugural celebration! It is an exercise in getting started. We want to share the act of burning the map as the opening ceremony to this joint venture. The project is built on the destruction of something that is painstakingly made. It is a cathartic and certainly not an unpleasant act. Destruction by fire: a launch pad to a new trajectory!

Asterion City: Ruin Porn

This is a work in progress—a peek behind the scenes of the development of Asterion City. the progress, research and initial drawings. In this venue, Marguerite & Stanton-Jones could display their progress to date on this collaborative project. A solo show of Marguerite/Stanton-Jones, with support from the VSR collective and held in London at the Victorian Vaults.