meteorologies (w/N0A)





Niveau Zéro Atelier presents ‘Météorologies’. Alongside a design practice that seeks to offer alternative methods of production, the studio presents here a somewhat more mysterious part of its identity. As a result of a year of work spent listening closely to the bad weather, ‘Météorologies’ operates as a standpoint as much as a gesture of invisibility. With the aim of developing a practice open to other knowledges, this collective project was realized with Juliette Berthonneau (textile designer) & Gabriel Lévy (cook). It is structured around two spaces. In the first one, we discover a collection of furniture (shelves, bench, chairs, table, carpet, game board, water fountain...) which articulates together two materials: reused aluminum and clay collected in the in the construction sites of the Grand Paris. The second one displays the elements which surround these object’s manufacture: raw earth deposit, clay at rest, aluminum totems and edible materials...

On the reverse side of a standardized and polished space, they reveal the anatomy of a working process charged with a dimension which exceeds the field of the visible, paying attention to micro-events, and potential failure. Thus, the group affirms the coexistence of two types of thoughts. The one that is rational wants to foresee, to form and constrain the materials. The other,more magical, instills the reality with a productive uncertainty, and injects subjectivity into the functional discourse. At every level, the official versions contradict themselves and disintegrate, revealing their elementary fragility. Reality does not stop to reformulate itself as an ungraspable matter. Niveau Zéro Atelier decided to choose this bargaining with fate as its most valuable asset. It is this risky bet taking the form of the next cloud that was chosen to be displayed here, so that as they exit the workshop, objects clamp together function and an aesthetic mystery, reconciling what we know as opposed. Niveau Zéro Atelier wants to make a tool out of this fertile coexistence. A tool that could be used to make islands of stability, capable of resisting the uncertainty in which the contemporary contradictions leave us.