holons de Garonne, diptych portraits of the inhabitants – Verdun / Garonne (France)

The digital revolution in which we entered twenty years ago marks a decisive anthropological break through the reconfiguration of our relationship to time, space and others. We can then easily imagine that in a few generations, man will have changed so much, mutated, that a certain number of our cognitive faculties will appear as remote and improbable as can be for us those of the caveman. . At the time of the unified planet, breaking news, omnipresent Internet, omniscient smartphones, virtual or augmented reality, real-time, permanent geolocation, ever closer reconciliation between body and machine … many of our cognitive skills are deeply modified: memory, intuition, reasoning, writing, individuation …

In this context, it seemed interesting to keep an imprint of what makes “the salt of life” * of a human being in Verdun / Garonne in 2014. According to its history, dreams, education, his principles, or the way of leading his life, each one’s own “salt”.

For this project, we went for meeting the inhabitants, gathering an anthology of these small pleasures that make the salt of life: instants, feelings, memories, emotions, rituals, meetings, images … From February to June 2014, we have carried out a harvesting work, harvest of the “memory of the little things” that are the stuff of our daily life and, perhaps, beyond our status, our opinions, our beliefs, or the roles we have exercised the very essence of our beings. Each meeting was a very dense moment, an immersion in everyone’s memory, an exploration that mixes anecdotal and everyday life.

The testimonies of each gave birth to a series of portraits made in a mixed technique combining pencil drawing, shadow, animation drawing and video projection. A hybrid portrait between the inner and outer face of each, through the characters that populate his mind … the holons of each.

Thanks to the help of the inhabitants and former merchants of the rue Gabriel Péri, the portraits were installed in the vacant businness of the city center, on the occasion of the Art Art festival (June 2014, ). Each installation also left a trace, in the form of an augmented reality postcard, taking again the same device as the installations, a writing crossed between the external and internal aspect of each protrait.

* Françoise Héritier has opened a breach in her book published at the end of 2013, “The salt of life”, sharing the inventory both intimate and universal of what has made the salt of her life.