Tous·tes dans une photo

Tous·tes dans une photo is a communal art project carried out with and for the residents of the Larris neighborhood in Fontenay-sous-Bois

Being overwhelmed by abandoned and repurposed shopping carts that are scattered throughout its urban landscape, their presence was customized as a form of engagement with the residents. Transformed into a mobile relational aesthetic device, the shopping cart was made into a moving medium with which residents could convene in public space. Meant as a mode of engaging with the residents of Fontenay-sous-Bois, the reconfigured shopping cart was a gesture of local knowledge and collective imagination; inviting passersby to take part in activities that have taken place around it.

Having shared such moments with the residents uncovered collective memories of its spaces and disclosed the intense entanglements within the neighborhood. Local and artistic gestures specific to Fontenay-sous-Bois ventured off from the public to the private realm.

Determined to emulate a comparable procedure and create shared memories amongst the residents of its largest social housing unit, the Paris Habitat Tower, its stairwells, hallways and other thresholds of relational processes within the building were mapped. Making collective memories requires that same collective to present itself. For that reason, residents of one side of the building were invited to step out into their respective balconies in order to take a collective photograph, tous·tes dans une photo. Doing so required those living on
the opposite side of the Paris Habitat Tower to knock on the door of a neighbour living on its other side and be welcomed onto their balcony to take part in the photograph.

Fostering such relations has transformed the social fiber of the Paris Habitat Tower. Hand-painted signs, short poems and posters were placed in its communal spaces throughout the duration of the project, remaking transitional spaces into those of dialogue.
Taking a collective photograph thus became a tool, a pretext and a revealer. Documenting the collective has accelerated and brought to light its existing or latent relationships, helping to reinforce a sense of belonging into a shared space.

We would like to thank all the residents of the Paris Habitat Tower at 1 rue Martin Luther King, and to all those who showed themselves, on one side or the other of the building. This experience allowed us to bring more people closer to a commitment of active citizenship. Tous·tes dans une photo also enabled us to reach places where neither associations nor cultural offerings usually succeed, inviting each person to nurture a more conscious and less indifferent relationship with the other.

Everybody in a photo