In America, ads for utilities are, well, utilitarian at best. France prefers artistic illumination. Enter Paul Colin. It's a simple request: public financing for a better electrical distribution network. Underneath the ask, however, is a conundrum of wicked complexity. By 1970, coal was declining in favor of cheap oil. Oil, though, was subject to shocks and embargoes. Nuclear power was a third answer, but violent public opposition meant treading delicately upon the subject. Research had begun on French renewables, but the efficiencies just weren't there. Colin's composition addresses the complexity of energy, while avoiding it altogether. He places the funding request in one (quite Picasso-esque) hand, and magic sparks fly out the other end in a tangle of wires and cords roping themselves into a human shape—as if to say, We're all electric, in what amounts to a social funding of public infrastructure. This is the larger format.
Éditions du Belier
literature: PAI-LXXII, 195