Sentier Marcel

It is a path that climbs up to a sheepfold and along which two works from the collection L’Art en montagne, from the Gassendi museum are visible. One of them, by the artist Till Roeskens, retraces the life stories of a former shepherd from Haute-Bléone.

150 m after the start of the hike you will find Le Troupeau d’Hydropithèques by Joan Fontcuberta (2011). The bas-relief is located at the top of the cliff and can be located thanks to a marker located directly above it. It is advisable to have binoculars.

This work is part of a series initiated in the 2000s in the Digne region which will take you into a reality that is both plausible and unusual!
In fact, these are fossils of mermaid skeletons, a new paleontological species, ancestor of all European hominids, of which a group of five very well-preserved adults was found here. The exceptional discovery was facilitated by the collapse of the summit of the escarpment, thanks to a geological excursion led by Abbot Fontana. With this proposal, the artist of Catalan origin, a graduate in information sciences, theoretician, critic, historian and professor, implements a museographic device entirely devoted to falsification. Other fossils can be seen, for example, along the Chastelas or Roche Rousse hike, and a surprising installation can be visited at the Gassendi Museum.

Then you can continue on the path that climbs to the sheepfold of Marcel Segond, discovering station after station the work of Till Roeskens, Sentier Marcel (2017). This is a work to be explored which consists of the installation of a series of fragments of the story of this man, a shepherd in Blégiers for almost a century. It allows us to read in the landscape the traces of the upheavals that have impacted these mountains and the lives of its inhabitants. Individual memory is thus integrated into collective history.

Find the full description of the routes in the L’Art en montagne collection in the Topo guide “L’Art en montagne, 22 hikes to discover contemporary art in the Haute-Provence Geopark” (€15), available at the reception of the Gassendi museum, the Maison Alexandra David-Neel, and at the Tourist Office.