2013
Installation
Table with chairs, soil, water, vegetables, wood, a snail, the book Le Pari de la Décroissance by Serge Latouche, mp3 audio dialogues with headphones.
Serge Latouche, in the Theory of Degrowth, offers an organic vision of the economy, in connection with the biosphere, highlighting the limits of Development economics. The limits are due to a theoretical model which does not take into account the finiteness of the planet and the entropy.
In the vision proposed by Serge Latouche, the snail takes on a special meaning. Quoting Ivan Illich, Latouche invites to recover the “wisdom of the snail.” In building his house according to its geometrical ratio, the snail, ones reached the limit of growth that allows it to carry it, stops to build and starts to strengthen its home, in a decreasing way. The snail becomes an example of a degrowth society, for the recovery of a harmonious balance with nature and its processes. The snail has simply a sense of measure and limits.
During the first days of the residence, I found a small snail among salad leaves. It lived with me for two months sharing the kitchen table, the food and the time of the residence.
The exhibition is presented the kitchen table of the residence with the snail and its habitat, to build a living space. The table is an invitation to sit down, take time, and relate to a living environment. An invitation to think about the limits: the finite nature of our planet, the limits of development economics and growth, certain limits that determine the “norm” and what is more or less acceptable, the limited time of an artist in residence, the limit no-limit, between man and nature.
They were available to the public: the text of Serge Latouche Le Pari de la Décroissance and the audio recordings of some dialogue with Jean-Calude Girardin about the area’s industrial Salais sur-Sanne and agriculture.