Claude Cormier's 'Guiding Rules'

'Artificial, but Not Fake'

John Hill
20. september 2023
18 Shades of Gay was a kilometer-long installation suspended over Saint-Catherine Street in Montreal each summer from 2017 to 2019. (Photo: Jean-Michael Seminaro, courtesy of v2com)

The title of this post, “Artificial, but Not Fake,” is one of the short statements that comprise Cormier's manifesto from 2008. He follows those words in the short film embedded below with “authenticity above all else,” but then goes on to explain how Lipstick Forest “celebrates” the artificial in a way that is authentic, that clearly says “these are not real trees.” With paradoxical commentary and playful designs, no wonder the name of the 2021 monograph on the landscapes of Claude Cormier is Serious Fun.
 

Lipstick Forest, Montreal (Photo: Jean-Francois Vezina, courtesy of v2com)

Watch Claude Cormer revisit the manifesto he wrote in 2008, a text inspired by fellow Canadian Bruce Mau's “Incomplete Manifesto for Growth,” which was written a few years before as “a way of thinking about creative life.”:

Visit the websites of CCxA Architectes paysagistes inc. (PDF link) and TCLF to read remembrances of Claude Cormier, who died on September 15, 2023, from complications from Li-Fraumeni Syndrome, a rare genetic condition that predisposes carriers to multiple cancers.
Claude Cormier at Clock Tower Beach, Montreal, 2012 (Photo: Will Lew, courtesy of v2com)

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