Why do you participate in Artists@Work? What do you expect from this experience?
Artist@work is a way to transcend loneliness and territories, both of myself and geographic ones ; It appears as a place of meeting and thinking, an occasion to share opinion, advices, feelings and most of all, to get a distance during this work in progress.

Explain the main thematics of your project
Empty days - Les jours de rien - deals with philosophical and poetic notions of "exile"; Also with the risk taking, when we leave a known situation to an unknown one. I'm wondering about what happens in this time lapse : In our mind, in our body, with ourselves and with other ones. Then, I'm asking about what kind of landmarks help us not to get lost. It's a kind of travel with human being but even more, with our relationship to the world.

I'm thinking to Itsuo Tsuda who was a japanese philosopher, a practitioner and teacher of aikido and Seitai. Once I heard an interview : "Je surveille pour que les gens ne mélangent pas tout (...) On ne fait que programmer, planifier mais qu'est-ce que vous ressentez? (...) Il n'y a pas de maître, chacun est maître de son corps et de son mouvement (...) J'attends le jour où ma présence sera complètement inutile, le but principal du katsugen undo - mouvement régénérateur - c'est de former des hommes indépendants, qui n'ont besoin ni de béquilles ni de moyens de protection, qui marchent avec leurs propres jambes, des hommes libres qui ne sont pas écrasés sous le poids des interdits (...)".

It quickly means that we are our own master. He says that we always plan but, what do you feel? With (your) body and with the movement. "I'm waiting the day when I would be a useless being, the aim of Katsugen undo is to train people becoming free, human being who don't need crutches or protections to walk with their own legs, who are not crushed under the weight of forbidden." (...).

It is one of the thoughts following me in that project.

How to get closer to oneself in order to take part in the world "healthely"? I mean stripped both of ego stakes or inclinations of humanity in crisis.

I would like to imagine that revolt has no age and no borders.

Explain the different stages of production of your work

The first step is THE ARRIVAL, a comic by Shan Tan. Some months ago, I began to work with dancers and musicians up to that story. In these days, I didn't feel at ease with a straight work on exile or migration, all the more, it was the time we just have discovered images of the child lying on the beach in media.

So, I decided to question the experience of anyone: artist's but also the ones of men and women I met during workshops or in my ordinary life. I wanted to lead a search on that topic and experiment the movement - a kind of migration - by interviewing various people during a walk, a train trip...

I collected many contents and I realised a footprint of these meetings in a notebook I named PASSAGE(S) recherche sur nos exils. A sound capsule with both of their voice and a music title goes with each portrait as a landscape of each one ; A way to get closer of them.

For artist@work, I would go further and realise a work that I was not able to imagine before, maybe a POM (a little multimedia form). I have chosen to photograph a sailor I met in 2016 who lives on a old tall ship. He makes coffee, I cut his hair, we convers.

    - Do you know what is my name? My name is You. Y.O.U

    - You... as you?

    - Have a look, here are the first images of the boat the guy sent to me. Berthomé. Is he someone of your family?

Actually I think about him as a metaphorical character but he will not be the only one on pictures.

As a matter of fact, I like using cut-up, gathering various materials such as images, radio sounds, archives, sentences from books, people I meet, everything wich is usefull to write a story as we make a puzzle.

Yet, he embodies a choice which also relates about Les jours de rien.

Explain the choice of the title

Empty days - les jours de rien - is a tentative title which refers to Jeanne Benameur, an author who participated to my own revolt. I met her in my previous job and her words have traveled to my heart. I decided to resign some weeks later.

Empty days tells about those days when we are lost, when we don't know but in the same time, those days which allow us to find solutions if we accept to feel unbalanced.

I'm also thinking to L'exil et le royaume by Albert Camus because of the structure of the novel : a short story as a portrait, as a snapshot.

Then, most of the characters could be people I met for PASSAGE(S) but actually just anyone,

I.

Yannick.

You.