Design Myles Quin, Studio Fotokino / Manifesta, 2020;
16 postcard designs, edition of 100 of each design, four-colour Riso prints
‘The joy of effort’, ‘The mountain teaches us to strive and trains us to achieve’, ‘Better one who knows than one hundred who seek’, ‘Leaving on time means nothing if you don’t know where you’re going’, ‘On a long road a straw is a burden’, ‘He who walks softly travels long and far’, ‘Fatigue of the body, repose of the mind’, ‘Inaction is the rust of courage’, ‘When you’re in a hurry, get dressed slowly’, ‘Hiking banishes rhumatism and obsessive thoughts’, ‘Better an onion in the country than a chicken in the town.’ … Inspiring, uplifting, ocassionally puritanical and sometimes just plain odd, these gems of mountain wisdom come from the Excursionnistes marseillais’* – and more specifically from their club magazines between 1900 and 1950.
The lines drawn on the cards are either hiking paths, rock-climbing routes or mountain silhouettes - all taken from the Calanques national park where the excursionnistes were the first to democratise, maintain and properly map this wild landscape on the fringes of Marseille. The font is Sainte-Baume, created by the brilliant Formes Vives – it’s based on the art-deco iron-work sign above the entrance to the excursionnistes’ old HQ (now home to the equally brilliant Studio Fotokino, who invited us to create work about and with the excurs). The postcards were given away free as part of gethan&myles’ Essor / Anatomie de la Joie Collective exhibitions, shown at Manifesta XIII, Studio Fotokino and the Frac Sud.
* Founded in 1897, the history of the Excursionnistes Mareillais (Marseille’s rambling club) not only tells the story of Marseille and Provence, it also recounts the birth of tourism and leisure culture: a democratic ‘free’ time that was rapidly commodified. Theirs is a human and generous journey, made up of encounters, rambles and eccentric exploits where walking is a way of seeing and learning, and nature a school without limits. Their archives document our changing attitudes towards freedoms, leisure and the environment via thousands of photos (the new ‘people’s art’), hundreds of adverts (the new art of persuasion) and articles found in their quarterly magazines.
