Rue des Cités, in the heart of the Villette–Quatre Chemins district of Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis), artists and craftsmen have been creating, rehearsing and phosphorousing for more than twenty years in a former coal factory. Around it, HLM, a social residence, a few individual houses and small private housing buildings.
It is in this cultural wasteland, called “Villa mais d’ici” in a nod to the Roman Villa Medici, that the young Brazilian Renata took refuge this winter, while waiting to find an apartment suited to her size. . Not so simple: the student is a “giant” almost 4 meters high, a papier-mâché puppet, with green eyes and jet-black hair, born from the imagination and DIY ingenuity of the Great People, a street performance company.
One afternoon in January, the company's artistic director, Pauline de Coulhac, guides us to this out-of-format character through the Villa's hive but from here – the place now brings together around forty artistic structures . In a small workshop as cold as outside, large boxes line up on shelves. Giants are carefully stored there in bubble wrap, faces, arms and torsos jumbled together, as if they were patiently waiting to be brought back to life. Among them, Renata, who stares at us as soon as we open the box. She is one of the pillars of 88 avenue de la Républiquea Great People show currently being created.
“We need stories, they are what nourish the show”
Dedicated to the question of the right to housing, it is part of the “En-jeu” cycle devoted to the social conquests of the 20th arrondissement (social security, labor law, etc.). Object theater for young and old, to remind us that achievements can be won, that social struggles can be victorious, but never definitive. And today, in France, 330,000 people sleep on the streets. “We are the country of the enforceable right to housing, but we do not enforce it! The private rental stock is still the jungle,” regrets Pauline de Coulhac.
The writing and scenography of 88 avenue de la Républiquewhich will be played in public space, draws on the testimonies and ideas of the residents met. The artistic team, in particular the author Jean-Baptiste Evette and two visual artists, multiplies the stages of work as close as possible to its subject, as within the social residence of Barceleau, in Les Ulis (Essonne), in partnership with the lessor Toit et Joie-Poste Habitat, or in the popular Saint-Blaise district, in Paris. How to live with the anxiety of finding housing, paying rent, finding yourself on the street? What does it mean to live somewhere, to share common spaces? What is an ideal habitat? Renata's wanderings in the streets of Les Ulis, at the market, or in a social center, facilitate discussion. More mediator than character, the puppet brandishes his sign “Young giantess seeks ideal accommodation”. This poetic and silent interpellation creates a simple and effective link with the inhabitants. “She doesn’t speak, so she speaks all languages,” underlines Jean-Baptiste Evette. In fact, Renata has already received several offers of accommodation from associations or simple city dwellers, says Pauline de Coulhac, for whom the young giantess is the key to the meeting. “When they welcome him, people tell us about their lives. We are not sociologists, we need stories, they are what nourish the show.”
-Renata, like her alter egos, requires several days of work, with several hands: sculptor, painter (for the details of the face and skin), costume designer and dressmaker (at least 6 square meters of fabric are needed for a single pair of pants)… Often, residents of the neighborhoods where the puppets are created get involved. “You don't make a giant alone!» insists the director. The materials and manufacturing processes are accessible and transferable: recycled bottles, papier-mâché, tape, simple scissors, etc. Everything is removable and transportable. “What excites us are these brilliant little techniques. Put end to end, they produce incredible things. Our giants are almost immortal. Once the puppet is finalized, two carriers are necessary: you must be helped to hoist it on your back using a carrying rack (device intended for heavy loads, often used by firefighters), and take turns every forty-five minutes , because the puppets are not featherweights. The giants are not discreet: they are there to be seen. Their size seems to remind us that when you live in relegated places, you have to rise higher, speak louder, to appear.
“If poetry must be effective, it is here”
Making visible those that society tends to leave aside is also a feat often repeated by the Souffleurs commandos bleues, another artistic collective based in Aubervilliers. One of their projects is emblematic in this respect: a few years ago, in Beaugency (Loiret), a festival commissioned them for an intervention in public space. They did not take long to choose Garambault, a disadvantaged district on the outskirts of the city, which did not even appear on the town hall website in the list of its districts – quite a symbol! “We said to ourselves: if poetry has to be effective, it’s here.” says Olivier Comte, co-director of Les Souffleurs. So for months, in conjunction with schools and residents, the artists prepared an immense declaration of love in the city center, like a jilted lover who would try everything for everything: 800 panels of loving writings burning are made, borrowing from the words of children and adults in the neighborhood, and from the texts of René Char, Adonis, Duras or Verlaine.
Led by residents, these panels parade through the central market of Beaugency, and are the subject of a huge installation over 2 hectares, in a park in Garambault. As night falls, these sentimental writings are lit by a multitude of fires. The spectacle is unexpected, magical. “People told us: no one will come to Garambault. But 3,000 people came, the moment was extraordinary,” remembers Olivier Comte. Since this intervention by the Souffleurs, the city has decided to re-electrify the district, and to organize its annual festival there. And of course, Garambault entered the official town hall website… “We are sometimes told that art is window dressing, glitter, well no! With projects designed specifically, sensitively, for a neighborhood, for a place, poets also help to think about the world, to transform it.
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