les Malcommodes (Québec)
ANGLE DALHOUSIE ET MARCHÉ CHAMPLAIN
Impostor
The Royal Battery, part of the 17th Century fortifications built to protect Quebec City from attack, originally faced the St. Lawrence River.
But over the years the structure gradually ceded its position on the city’s shoreline, until the obsolete, abandoned landmark was paved over with layers of asphalt. A 1977 reversal of fortune saw the Battery completely dug up and rebuilt.
Impostor raises questions about the uses and abuses of historic landmarks with an illusory passage through the Royal Battery. By making two structures meet in a previously impenetrable site, the project evokes and interrogates the theatricality and sleight-of-hand inherent in the often factitious recreations of historic buildings.
