"Villeurbanne,
from observation to appropriation"

...back to exhibitions

Residency in Totem: a young worker hostel, oct-nov 2002

I am invited for 2 months in the hostel. The residents do not invest it and most of them do not know about the district around. In fact, this part of the town is being transformed into a residency district (people are working in Lyon and coming here just to sleep, the clearest example of that is the number of shops that are closed). I would like the residents to know about that and generally sensitize them to their everyday life spaces.

I decided to live there as an anonymous person and to act silently. I presented regularly some texts, drawings and photographs to the residents. I invited them to discover their surrounding. Sometimes, I did also install some artistic videos to understand in a different way the theme I was talking about.

Quickly, people talk about those actions, mainly because they didn't know who was doing it! It's only at the end of my stay that I announced myself as the author and that I presented all of the work. Today, an artistic book remains of this residency.

examples of collected pictures:

an empty house still up

an exceptional contrast betwenn the dark sky and the with buildings