Traveles Fleurs de la Maladie by Subset was awarded the Jury Prize at the 17th Festival des Architectures Vives
Subset proudly introduces its Les Fleurs de la Maladie art installation, winner of the Jury Prize at the 17th Festival des Architectures Vives in Montpellier, France. What value do we place on health after more than three years of the COVID-19 pandemic? How different are our personal experiences and memories from the times when contact restrictions, or even nightly curfews, as well as frequent testing and monitoring, provided a strict framework in which to move?
As an interpretation of the festival theme of Sacrality, Hannah Fuchsenberger, Anne-Fleur Ising, Atidh Jonas Langbein, Gianna Neumann, and Helio Philipp Spiess conceived an installation that provokes a personal and emotional engagement with the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic through an aesthetic, sensual experience. Like white flowers, 1,482 COVID-19 test cassettes float above a blue platform. Les Fleurs de la Maladie - Flowers of the Disease - asks what value we attribute to our own and public health in general.
The installation was constructed mainly from scrap material in a representative courtyard in Montepellier’s historic centre. Twelve Eiermann table tops, which would have been discarded at the Bauhaus University Weimar due to heavy wear and tear, were manually sanded, repainted, and screwed onto a substructure of wooden slats in the courtyard. 1,482 corona tests were applied to the panels on 1mm metal rods in a clear geometric grid. They were donated by a school in Munich that had purchased them for testing pupils, but they expired before their planned use and would have been subsequently disposed of.

Les Fleurs de la Maladie - play with light and shadow
Photo credit: Paul Kozlowski - Photoarchitecture
By redesigning and reusing the materials, the installation 'Les Fleurs de la Maladie' thematizes environmentally conscious and sustainable approaches in the arts, while opening up this kind of space for wide-ranging interpretations and to encourage viewers to reflect on the value of health in our society. The flowers further invited visitors to share their personal memories and experiences of the pandemic.

Installation in the yard of the Hôtel des Trésoriers de la Bourse
Photo credit: Paul Kozlowski - Photoarchitecture

The installation in the courtyard of the Hôtel des Trésoriers de la Bourse
Photo credit: Paul Kozlowski - Photoarchitecture
About Subset
Subset is an agile network composed of numerous Subsets that can be reassembled in context-dependent situations. Subset works based on diverse perspectives, forms of knowledge, and competencies as it views its multidisciplinary composition as an enriching knowledge repository. Based on a contextualized approach to research and design, Subset is a continually evolving collective that emphasizes the process, and accepts experiment and failure as integral parts of that process. Subset is committed to sustainable and responsible design that works with the environment and values the earth as a home. Subset understands space as a complex product of continuous interrelationships between human and non-human actors, and strives to initiate concrete actions from dialogue and negotiation of matters.