From 2012 to 2014, I was a volunteer in the Restaurants du cœur, a French charity. Once a week I helped out with the distribution of hot meals on a parisian street. This experience gave birth to an art project. At the end of the distribution of the meals I drew portraits of two or three beneficiaries, and asked them a series of questions about their origins, their dreams, their goals. At home, I recorded our conversations and finished the portraits, then offered copies to my models.
This mechanical book is dedicated to one of my models from that period. A sunny person (I’m not sure I spelled his name correctly), with a kind smile and eyes that shone with a gentle light. On the flaps of the book are extracts from our conversation one humid evening in Paris, on the Avenue du Trône, by the light of a street lamp.
– No, I don’t know the origin of my name, sorry. Maybe Breton? Italian?
– What do I do for a living? Playing violin in the underground. I taught myself. I only play baroque music in the underground.
– Why baroque? Because this music lets us travel.
– My biggest dream in life is to play in hospitals for the elderly.
– Why am I not doing it now? I’m not ready yet. I’m not at the right level yet. It’s very difficult to play for the elderly. You have to prepare the program in a very subtle way to make feel them happier. It will certainly be a mix of classical and Caribbean music.
– You have to follow your dreams and be patient. The most important thing in life is patience. And music.
To make this book we used :
– An abandoned wooden shelf found in the street
– A piece of the ping-pong table my husband played with his brother when they were little
– A piece of hanger for an Air France steward’s uniform
– A 25 centime coin dated 1921, found in the ground in our cellar
– A piece of my husband’s checkered shirt.

The mechanical book “Gare du Nord” was selected for an exhibition of kinetic art in the Small Hall of the Russian National Tchaikovsky Conservatory, under the patronage of the Mayor of Moscow Vladimir Sobyanin. Three of us artists accompanied a concert of mechanistic music with our works.
The comment of this photo could have ended here.
BUT
The parcel with the work was blocked at its point of departure. After a week of desperate attempts to contact the customer service of the transport company, we had to accept the obvious. It was impossible to remove it or to move the shipment forward. There were only 4 days left before the opening.
So a decision was made.
We had 48 hours to
– Find a wooden board (thanks Sylvain!)
– Buy walnut stain and varnish in the DIY shop at the other end of our region
– Cut, coat, colour, paint, engrave, pyrography, assemble, screw, adjust…
– Buy plane tickets
– Do a PCR test
– Prepare a 4 cm thick file with all the possible and impossible papers justifying the necessity of my presence in Moscow at the time of COVID, to show to the customs officers at the closed border between France and Russia
Of course, we didn’t have much time to sleep. The time on the clock corresponds to the time we went to bed the night before the flight.
The book was in the right place on the day of the concert.
Thanks to Galina Golubeva for the idea of adding a little light inside.

TECHNIQUE
DIMENSIONS	31 x 30 x 18 cm
DATE	2021
AVAILABILITY	Available to purchase. Please feel free to get in touch.
PRICE	On demand
BONUS