Atmospheric Mechanism 2.0 (in progress)

2025–2026, Cité internationale des arts, Paris

(Installation: computer, humidity and temperature sensors, weather API, mist maker, fan, aluminium condensation plate, water tank, water pump, heat source, distillation apparatus, programmable LED lighting, salt, cast of my body, charcoal on paper.)

Atmospheric Mechanism 2.0 is the system I have been developing since September 2025 at the Cité internationale des arts. For the first time, I seek to bring together the three processes of my work so that they become a single machine. This work prepares their unification.

Atmospheric Mechanism. A computer receives the weather data of another place and another date and compares it with the conditions measured in real time in the studio. The difference between the two, shown on screen, is the Third State. It controls the fog, the ventilation, the heat and the light, which reproduces the solar radiation and moonlight of the chosen date. The salt placed in the system absorbs humidity and recrystallises on a cast of my body with each cycle. Between November 2025 and March 2026, the black cast became covered in salt.

Theory of Transition. My body gives the system its scale. Over the ten months of the residency, I made a charcoal drawing every evening, eyes closed, reproducing the movements of the day from memory. Each drawing is dated; the circle marks the moment I found a maple leaf. The drawings are hung without chronological order.

Original Distillation. On arrival, I distilled several materials to find the scent of the Cité in Montmartre. The maple leaf was the closest. For ten months, I distilled maple leaves collected on my walks; each distillation is dated and enters the system, where its scent circulates with the fog.

Since (change of state) (2022), the climate of another place has transformed my sculptures. In Atmospheric Mechanism 2.0, the reproduced atmosphere meets that of the studio. Their interference is the Third State: what Gilles Deleuze calls a crystal of time, a point where past and present coexist. Measured and fed back into the system, this interference builds with salt, which keeps its material trace. The system is designed to be replicated.