LATOUREX (Laboratoire de tourisme expérimental)

“Ask Arianes living in Toulouse to show me their ten favourite spots in the city. Ten spots that are important to them for a variety of reasons, but that they don’t have to justify. Ten places, ten locations pinpointed on the map of Toulouse which will punctuate a pedestrian promenade. Distribute these Ariadne’s threads in a booklet for visitors (or as a column in a local newspaper)”.

Joël Henry

Flânerie and dérive (strolling and drifting) have given poetic and political pedigree to urban promenades. The dream of “encounters” or the quest for “situations” in which existence suddenly grows intense, emancipated from the functional routines of urban transit, have found their theatre in the modern city. Creator of the Experimental Tourism Laboratory (Latourex), Joël Henry enriches this now classic Situationist practice with a OULIPO-style approach to tourism, involving rules whose arbitrariness offers visitors the guarantee of unlikely adventures. For le Printemps de septembre, women named Ariane will thus state their favourite places in Toulouse and these will be indicated on the city map, forming an itinerary with a hidden logic.