Hannah Vaughn & Damien Delorme

Frontier Fellows April 2016

Damien's Website

Hannah Vaughn is an architect based in Salt Lake City, where she also teaches at the University of Utah School of Architecture. Hannah grew up under big silent skies in a remote mountain valley in New Mexico. Her love of the Mountain West has fueled inquiry into what it means to live here and to build here—questions that often lead to extensive studies of place, process, and material.

Damien Delorme is a professeur agrégé of philosophy and guest lecturer of aesthetics at the Université Savoie Mont-Blanc. He is currently pursuing his Doctorate of Environmental Philosophy at the Université Lyon III, and lives in Haute-Savoie. Damien is a passionate traveler, musician, and mountain athlete. He is presently touring the American landscape with his bicycle investigating ecological innovation and pedagogy—a study titled Untaking Space.

Damien and Hannah met at the University of Savoie in Chambéry, France, in 2003. They studied philosophy there, galvanized a profound friendship, and started a lasting conversation. Damien finished a series of French degrees at the Sorbonne. Hannah took a hard left, moving to Utah and earning her architecture degree from The University of Utah. Every couple of years, they conspire to cross paths, each time pushing one another’s investigations further, and covering a lot of ground trying to figure it all out.

We both love the wide open skies, and don’t mind trodding through the wet spring earth for a better vista. There is also the compelling idea of being invited as a dinner guest to Green River’s table, where we’re responsible for the music. We are interested in listening closely to what the place has to say and to produce work that amplifies its character.

 

During their time in Green River, Hannah Vaughn and Damien Delorme developed and installed A Room for the Living | Une Chambre pour les Vivants. The piece was situated at The Slabs (originally used for bunkers for workers during the height of The Green River Launch Complex) and The Cistern located nearby. Participants were invited to join Vaughn and Delorme at The Cistern one evening. Upon arrival, Delorme played his trumpet into the cavernous cistern, resulting in a hauntingly beautiful performance. When one cupped their ear to the exterior of the cistern, they were rewarded with an unbelievably amplified auditory experience. The audience was then invited to hike down to The Slabs where Vaughn and Delorme had installed a series of sculptures and a small fire for a conclusion of storytelling, readings, and refreshments.