ABONDANCE et DISPARITION

Abondance et Disparition – Urban Signs and Visual Overload

“Abondance et Disparition” is a video artwork created by Alex Kanos that explores the visual language of urban environments through the presence, accumulation, and disappearance of signs within the city. The work focuses on how cities are saturated with visual information, where every surface, wall, street corner, and architectural element becomes a carrier of signs with specific functions, intentions, and lifespans.

The central idea of the video is that the city behaves like a system that continuously produces, absorbs, and eliminates visual information. Signs appear in the urban landscape to fulfill a precise role: advertising, orientation, regulation, communication, or identification. However, these signs are never permanent. They are replaced, removed, painted over, or visually absorbed by new layers of information. This constant cycle creates a shifting visual ecosystem.

In this process, the city can be understood as a form of visual digestion. It absorbs images, texts, symbols, and graphic elements, transforming them over time. Some signs disappear completely, while others leave behind traces, residues, or partial visibility. The urban surface becomes a layered structure where different temporalities coexist within the same visual field.

The video highlights this tension between abundance and disappearance. On one side, the city is overloaded with signs competing for attention. On the other, these same signs are fragile and temporary, constantly threatened by erasure or transformation. This contradiction creates a visual instability that defines contemporary urban experience.

A key aspect of the work is the observation of how streets change their appearance over time. Urban environments are not fixed compositions; they are constantly rewritten surfaces. Walls are repainted, advertisements are replaced, architectural details are modified, and public spaces evolve according to economic, social, and cultural forces. As a result, the visual identity of a street is never stable.

This dynamic relationship between presence and disappearance also raises questions about memory and visual perception. What remains in the city is not always what is visible. Often, traces of previous signs persist beneath new layers, creating a form of hidden visual history embedded in the urban fabric.

“Abondance et Disparition” was presented as part of Alex Kanos’ final diploma project at the Beaux-Arts, marking an important stage in his artistic research into urban systems and visual language. The work was also broadcast on Canal+, extending its reach beyond the academic context and situating it within a broader cultural framework.

Through this video, the artist develops a critical approach to urban semiotics, focusing on how meaning is constructed, overwritten, and dissolved within public space. The city is not treated as a static background but as an active system of visual production and erosion.

The work belongs to a wider artistic investigation into urban transformation, where signs are not only communication tools but also transient elements within a constantly evolving environment. This perspective positions the city as a living visual organism, continuously reorganizing its own language.

“Abondance et Disparition” ultimately reflects on the instability of meaning in contemporary urban life, where visual information is both overwhelming and ephemeral, constantly emerging and disappearing within the same space.

Produced in 2008 and Broadcast on Canalplus as part of “Les Films Fait à la Maison” in September 2009