Romanes, Biennal of contempory art, Melle
Project
The project wil be about citizenship, identity, belonging to a place.
The city is taken as
the ensemble of its citizens; the aim is to constitute a family album-
the "family" of the inhabitants of Melle (by family I mean the
ensemble of all the occupants of a flat: singles, co-occupants,
couples, with or without children, of all ages, social classes or
origins).
The families wil be photographed in the main room (dining-room, living-room or kitchen).
A significant number of portraits will be needed in order to escape te
anecdotic side of family portrait, to constitute a corpus, an
approximate of
the sociological complexity of the city.
The participants will acknowledge themselves as families but also as members of a community.
The photographs will be of a quite modest size, large enough to allow an easy reading and a good presence in the exhibition room
(around 20x20 or 30x30 cm). they will take their strength by their
number (a hundred at least) and the fprmal coherence between them.
I consider such a work as a statement about the reality of a city at a
certain time. It is a beginning point for other approaches: gathering
of familial
archives, interviews of inhabitants about the city "small history"; it
can then be continued and enriched by others: It is meant to be used.
To that effect, it will also exist as an ensemble, in the form of a CD-Rom containing all the images scanned in high definition.
The actual work is constituted by the ensemble of its forms and applications.
jls, 2004
Each participant recieved a print of the photograph taken.
It was exposed in the Hotel de Ménoc, place of the Court House (see pictures in the exhibition views section).
On the opening day, a picture was taken by the local photographer, of all the participants in front of the kiosk.
A print of this picture was given to each participant by the Municipality.