The Crimson Bag Girl // Anekdote Collective

Text description provided by the architects.

The Red Bag Lady tackles notions of culture and image-consumption at the 15th edition of the Festival des Architectures Vives.

Set at the Lunas Courtyard, a few steps away from Montpellier’s Arc de Triomphe, the 3m tall pixelated silhouette contrasts sharply with the late XVII century building and its surroundings.

Depicting a cutout figure that showed up extensively in renderings from the last decade, The Red Bag Lady represents for the two designers : « a symptom of the changes affecting the profession». The sculpture marks the first project in France of anekdote – a Berlin and Montreal based architecture collective led by Leon Seibert and Frédéric Champagne.

In an exploration under the theme of ‘Transition’ — the subject of the 15th edition of the Festival des Architectures Vives — the project becomes an opportunity for the two young designers to test a tongue-in-cheek discourse on the scale of object design.

For the designers, the constant pressure of image production — powered by the thumbs up economy — favors a transition towards an architecture that is more global, more politicized.

Architects are pushed to manufacture environments not beholden to history nor culture. Context is but a suggestion found in the form of tropical plants and juxtaposed cutouts of 2d people positioned with surgical accuracy. The silhouette of The Red Bag Lady grew in popularity along that of photorealism. She quickly gained worldwide recognition and use.

Not un-like architecture in the age of globalization, she was a nameless figure: familiar yet unknown.

« While images fight for our attention on LED-lit screens, the ‘Red Bag Lady’ — which is an a-contextual element of image compositing — enters the real world. The icon of digital representation is materialized.».

By making the installation part of an event such as the FAV (Festival des Architectures Vives), the designers wish to bring the conversations on the relationship between the image, the built environment and its context to the larger public.

The installation is produced with a CNC mill and waterjet cutting machines.

The standing cutout is made from 3 acrylic sheets with a screen printed pattern while a steel base of similar dimensions holds the structure upright. The varying weight of the materials allowed the designers to show contradicting visual cues: a slim black steel sheet balances the thick yet transparent cutout.

Similarly, the whole project hints at digital imperfections : a floating shadow, pixelated representation, oversized dots from the screen printing process.

Visitors are encouraged to walk around the sculpture which at one points seems to totally vanish; leaving only the massive shadow in black paint-coated steel — yet another nod to the notion of the use of the digital in the context of the built environment.

The project was showcased from July 6th to 10 at the Festival des Architectures Vives, an event promoting the work of emerging designers in the form of temporary architecture installations throughout historic courtyards of Montpellier. .

The Red Bag Lady Gallery