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This British sculptor, born in 1956, prefers to work outdoors using the natural materials that surround him. His works are mainly ephemeral and documented by photographs but occasionally he undertakes projects that could be described as permanent. Since 1995, when he had his first exhibition at the departmental Museum of Digne, he has returned many times to work in the region that has become almost as familiar as his adoptive home, Scotland. Because of his numersous visits, Digne has today one of the largest collections in the world of works by Goldsworthy. Most of the works have been realised in the region around Digne, including some photographic pieces and a major indoor clay wall installation at the Museum of Digne. The Museum of Digne and the Geological Reserve of Haute Provence have formed a partnership that has resulted in the installation of several large outdoor sculptures (Five Water Cairns, 1998) in the Reserve. In 1999 Andy Goldsworthy began the construction of three Sentinel Cairns that will mark the main three valleys that are part of the protected territory of the Reserve. The projects of the House for the Art is a six day walk that follows the footpath that will go across the northern part of the Geological Reserve. During this walk, the hikers will meet the works by Goldsworthy that are set up along the path or that are in the refuge in which one spends the night while on the hike.   ORIGINS OF ANDY GOLDSWORTHY'S PROJECT In the summer of 1988, I proposed another project to Guy. For the last few years, I have been working on the 100 Sheepfold project in Cumbria, which involved the rebuilding of derelict sheepfolds, during the reconstruction of which, I incorporated an artwork. It is a very complex project that I do not want to explain fully here, but during it's progress, I have also become interested in all agricultural buildings, shepherds huts, barns etc. I saw that the Reserve has many such buildings. The problem is that there are so many buildings, few of which are of any extraordinary architectural qualities that would ensure their preservation. Despite their ordinariness, collectively they give to the landscape a richness. I am drawn to work with these for the same reason that I am drawn to work with sheepfolds. I enjoy placing my work in an agricultural context and finding a new purpose for these old buildings so that their reconstruction is more than nostalgia. I suggested to Guy that we find such buildings, renovate them and in so doing, incorporate a work of art, so that the building becomes a house for the art. In exchange for the protection the building gives the work, the building will be made good again. When looking at the three cairn walk, we realised that there was distance enough between each cairn for bothies (refuges) to be made, in which people could stay overnight in the remote parts of the walk. In this way, one project overlapped with another. As always with such exchanges, the project becomes richer. The idea of rebuilding a derelict shepherd's hut, barn etc., that will contain a work of art and in which people will stay overnight, makes the experience much deeper. I very much like the idea of people spending the night with the sculpture. No longer a visitor, but guest to eat, sleep and wake up to a sculpture has to make for a more intimate relationship between the viewer and the work. It is the difference between living with and looking at - an observer or a participant. I will make the all walk with my wife Judith; Guy, Nadine Gomez and her husband Herve; Thomas Riedelsheimer and Dieter Sturmer, two filmmakers. These are people that I consider to be my friends and I know them well. It will be a walk that I am determined to enjoy. The people that accompany me, I feel at ease and comfortable with. I have visited Digne now several times. My reason for returning is of course the landscape, but then I have invitations to work in extraordinary landscapes all over the world. I return to Digne, because of Guy and Nadine and the landscape in which they live and work. As well as a film, I will make a guidebook to the walk, which will show maps, my diary notes, images of the ephemeral work, Guy and Nadine's geological observations, and Herve's photographs - all describing the walk. The purpose of the walk is to link the cairns and the valleys by foot, but also to begin the story of a walk that will be written more deeply by each person who embarks upon it. In a broader sense, I feel it is important to shift emphasis away from the road and the car as the only means to explore the Reserve. We should also be aware of the possible social and economic implications of establishing such a route upon the villages that lie on its path. I imagine that visitors would be welcome in a region that relies heavily on tourism for its economy. Each proposal and visit to Digne seems to result in another! To complete the walk, a work should be located around Digne itself. After all, this is the beginning and the end of the walk. A couple of years ago, I made a cairn inside the building of the Head Quarters to British Airways at Heathrow, London, as a reminder of the journeys that I have made. I also made outside, beyond the window of the building, a wall with a cavity, making a negative, shadow form of the cairn. I wanted the work to explore the idea of travelling, of origin, home and journey. It would be so appropriate to place such a work at Digne. Three cavities in three walls, relating to the cairns in each valley. The size of the cairn at British Airways is about 1.5 metres. The cairn at Digne is 2.5 metres. This means that the cavities are correspondingly much larger. This would be a massive and major piece for me to make. It is something that may well be beyond the resources of the Reserve Geologique and consequently may never be realised. Even so, it is important for the idea, at least to exist. At Digne, as with everything that I seemed to have made there, my work takes on new dimensions. To place such pieces where the cairn and cavity are put in a context where fossils have been found, where not just the fossil is important, but the place from which it was contained.  A.G, 1999 THE PROJECT PHYLOSOPHY Memory of the places and preservation of unprotected rural patrimony Creation of a collection Conceiving and creating a substantial art project with the objective of spreading the contemporary artistic creation to the rural countryside is in itself something exceptional. This is all the more true because the project of the Houses for the Art represents over half the area of the geological reserve of the Alps of Haute Provence, which is approximately 100.000 hectares. The originality of the project comes from the area it represents, outside the institutional environment of contemporary art, what states clearly a willingness to share the contemporary creation to the majority of the population. One in three Frenchman visits Museums, while 70% go walking and hiking in the countryside. You have to walk over 6 days to complete the entire walk and to see all the art installations. The walk is initially, a means by which the people cut themselves off from the daily routine of life to enjoy fully the area of the Haute Provence region, an ode to the slowness, to the breathing, to the silence. The artistic installations are an integral as part of the rural environment. The places that will host the sculptures of Andy Goldsworthy are condemned to decay because the traditional, social and cultural agricultural practices have made them useless, obsolete. Local inhabitants will become involved in protecting the buildings they hold dear to their ancestry, and it enables them to have access to a contemporary project, to know the creation of our time. Finally, the Houses for the Art creation is in keeping with the artistic great project whose purpose is to make at Digne a collection of the works of Andy Goldsworthy and also to create in the region of Digne a centre of contemporary development dealing with the relationships between man and nature and thus creating a portfolio of the original works born from the experience between some artists and this region. Nadine Gomez-Passamar Curator of the Musée départemental de Digne. CONTEXT OF THE PROJECT The Department of the Alps of Haute Provence is that of the wide areas. The size of the territory and the low population density that still lives in the axis of the Great Valleys (Durance, Bleone and Verdon) lends itself to a wide natural area of exceptional beauty and quality. These areas are part of the network of common interest sites that represent the European biological diversity: the network Natura 2000. The recent consideration of the protection system of the nature, on a European wide basis is taking into consideration and keeping on the sites the human, economical, social and cultural activities. For a few years, the Cairn (initiative of the departmental Museum of Digne and the Natural Geological Reserve of Haute Provence), have invited some internationally known artists, to reside at Digne-les-Bains, with the purpose of their making original artistic works for the 180.000 hectares that have now been classified a Natural Reserve since 1984. Andy Goldsworthy has been attracted to the natural areas of Europe, where you can find visible signs of the human presence through the disseminated traces in some places that today seem to be unachievable, as far as our way of experiencing a territory has changed since the beginning of the century.   SCHEDULE by Andy Goldsworthy The first cairn was made in 1999. I will make the second cairn in the year 2000 and the third in 2001. The three will not only mark a journey through Digne, but also a journey through time. I am not interested in the Millennium itself, but I am interested in the idea of the passage and flow of time. All of the works that I have made to mark the Millennium have their origins and roots in this century and their end in the next. They bridge the two centuries and emphasise that time flows through and does not stop to begin again in the next century. Whilst making the cairn in 2000 and 2000, we will try to locate sites for the refuges. This project is one of the most interesting that I could imagine doing. It represents an enormous amount of work for me, but fits extremely well into my own need for having a strong and deep relationship with particular places. Digne has more than proved itself in its ability to provide me with an extraordinarily rich context for my work. I am very proud to have so many of my works in the collection of the Museum and the Reserve.

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