Art Orienté Objet

Unrooted Tree (Arbre sans racines) ou la Machine à faire parler les arbres was conceived in 2009 by Benoît Mangin et Marion Laval-Jeantet, during a trip to Cameroon in mountainous forests exploited by a certified company, where only the tree trunks are usually exploited while the branch parts are left on site. From the remains of a felled giant tropical tree, the artists recomposed a new tree on which they carved the various stages of phylogenesis, the developing history of all species. At their extremity, many of them are sculpted into a bike fork to which is fixed a wheel with spokes bearing enigmatic phrases related to the 360 degree Sabians, short symbolic astrological formulae which, segmenting the zodiac signs, serve to nuance predictions. Art Orienté Objet’s work can be interpreted as a poetic-melancholic metaphor for the mysterious relationship between microcosm and macrocosm, and can be activated by the artists during performances, in which the tree answers the visitors' questions.