Pub Date : 2019-05-01DOI: 10.3828/liverpool/9781786941787.003.0010
Joshua Armstrong
As the natural spaces of the European countryside are increasingly micro-managed and diminished, they lose their timeless pastoral feel and come to serve, rather, as amorphous liminal spaces where one urban site ends and another begins: ‘edgelands,’ as British poets Roberts and Farley call them. And yet, as philosopher Edward Casey points out, there can be no oikos—no ‘ecology,’ no ‘dwelling’—without edges. And therefore, although we typically pay little attention to them, such edges, in their silent, unnoticed way, crucially subtend, give shape to, and have much to reveal about the urban environments we inhabit. In Jean Rolin’s Les Événements (2015), the focus of this chapter, we follow a narrator whose attempt to escape a near-future France in the throes of civil war takes him across the back roads of just such a countryside. Avoiding the senseless war, the narrator navigates an edgeland network of fields, ditches, and rivers. There, where long-abandoned industrial sites neighbour shopping centre parking lots, and where, in Rolin’s fiction, highways serve as battle fronts, Rolin sketches the unique and melancholic topography of an unnoticed, undervalued, and fragile ecosystem just as threatened by industry and urban sprawl as by the ravages of war.
{"title":"French Edgeland Poetics","authors":"Joshua Armstrong","doi":"10.3828/liverpool/9781786941787.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/liverpool/9781786941787.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"As the natural spaces of the European countryside are increasingly micro-managed and diminished, they lose their timeless pastoral feel and come to serve, rather, as amorphous liminal spaces where one urban site ends and another begins: ‘edgelands,’ as British poets Roberts and Farley call them. And yet, as philosopher Edward Casey points out, there can be no oikos—no ‘ecology,’ no ‘dwelling’—without edges. And therefore, although we typically pay little attention to them, such edges, in their silent, unnoticed way, crucially subtend, give shape to, and have much to reveal about the urban environments we inhabit. In Jean Rolin’s Les Événements (2015), the focus of this chapter, we follow a narrator whose attempt to escape a near-future France in the throes of civil war takes him across the back roads of just such a countryside. Avoiding the senseless war, the narrator navigates an edgeland network of fields, ditches, and rivers. There, where long-abandoned industrial sites neighbour shopping centre parking lots, and where, in Rolin’s fiction, highways serve as battle fronts, Rolin sketches the unique and melancholic topography of an unnoticed, undervalued, and fragile ecosystem just as threatened by industry and urban sprawl as by the ravages of war.","PeriodicalId":324635,"journal":{"name":"France in Flux","volume":"132 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121626902","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-03-28DOI: 10.3828/LIVERPOOL/9781786941787.003.0003
D. Schilling
Decades of plant closures in metropolitan France have created a heightened awareness of the disused quality of the country’s industrial landscape. Even as a burgeoning working-class heritage industry has attempted to rehabilitate some physical sites to educational or touristic ends, documentary filmmakers have turned to human communities that in the age of ‘délocalisation’ have been forcibly evicted from sites of productive labour. Drawing on the travelogue Et la vie (Denis Gheerbrant, 1991), the plant closure exposé Silence dans la vallée (Marcel Trillat, 2007) and the testimonial poetic meditation Le Chemin noir (Abdallah Badis, 2012), this chapter highlights a recurring documentary figure, namely the image of individual workers who explicate their present and past situation against the backdrop of blast furnaces, mine pits, slag heaps, or other disused industrial structures across the blighted regions of northern and north-eastern France. Filmed on the site of its expropriation, the labourer’s body becomes strongly performative, affirming the imperatives of collective working-class memory and lending layered meaning to otherwise mute landscapes. By re-presenting affect-laden speech and gesture, filmmakers negotiate oppositions between visibility and invisibility, technology and nature, nostalgia and futurity, so as to reassert documentary’s micropolitical purchase upon the real.
{"title":"Disease and Affect","authors":"D. Schilling","doi":"10.3828/LIVERPOOL/9781786941787.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/LIVERPOOL/9781786941787.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Decades of plant closures in metropolitan France have created a heightened awareness of the disused quality of the country’s industrial landscape. Even as a burgeoning working-class heritage industry has attempted to rehabilitate some physical sites to educational or touristic ends, documentary filmmakers have turned to human communities that in the age of ‘délocalisation’ have been forcibly evicted from sites of productive labour. Drawing on the travelogue Et la vie (Denis Gheerbrant, 1991), the plant closure exposé Silence dans la vallée (Marcel Trillat, 2007) and the testimonial poetic meditation Le Chemin noir (Abdallah Badis, 2012), this chapter highlights a recurring documentary figure, namely the image of individual workers who explicate their present and past situation against the backdrop of blast furnaces, mine pits, slag heaps, or other disused industrial structures across the blighted regions of northern and north-eastern France. Filmed on the site of its expropriation, the labourer’s body becomes strongly performative, affirming the imperatives of collective working-class memory and lending layered meaning to otherwise mute landscapes. By re-presenting affect-laden speech and gesture, filmmakers negotiate oppositions between visibility and invisibility, technology and nature, nostalgia and futurity, so as to reassert documentary’s micropolitical purchase upon the real.","PeriodicalId":324635,"journal":{"name":"France in Flux","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121925426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"List of Contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvqmp3xz.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvqmp3xz.4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":324635,"journal":{"name":"France in Flux","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132183845","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This chapter investigates the field of contemporary French documentary as a source for cultural representations of farmland and farm life, a segment of the national territory that has undergone profound change in the past half-century. Farmland, which represents over half of the surface area of metropolitan France, provides employment to an ever-smaller percentage of the population. The amount of land needed to make a living continues to grow, and farms are increasingly run by corporations rather than by people who live and work on the same property. Since 2000, a significant number of French documentaries have explored to the changes wrought to the landscape and to farm life by the agricultural industrialisation of the previous half-century. By reading across a broad collection of recent documentaries on farming, this chapter reveals the contours of a broader conversation about the emergence of, and need for, new forms of reconnection between the inhabitants of rural and urban France. The contours of this conversation emerge both in the documentary forms and practices in the films as well as new forms of interaction between films and their audiences.
{"title":"Depth of Field","authors":"A. Levine","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvqmp3xz.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvqmp3xz.8","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter investigates the field of contemporary French documentary as a source for cultural representations of farmland and farm life, a segment of the national territory that has undergone profound change in the past half-century. Farmland, which represents over half of the surface area of metropolitan France, provides employment to an ever-smaller percentage of the population. The amount of land needed to make a living continues to grow, and farms are increasingly run by corporations rather than by people who live and work on the same property. Since 2000, a significant number of French documentaries have explored to the changes wrought to the landscape and to farm life by the agricultural industrialisation of the previous half-century. By reading across a broad collection of recent documentaries on farming, this chapter reveals the contours of a broader conversation about the emergence of, and need for, new forms of reconnection between the inhabitants of rural and urban France. The contours of this conversation emerge both in the documentary forms and practices in the films as well as new forms of interaction between films and their audiences.","PeriodicalId":324635,"journal":{"name":"France in Flux","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129853610","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"List of Illustrations","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvqmp3xz.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvqmp3xz.3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":324635,"journal":{"name":"France in Flux","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124342380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The history of French photography has been marked by the preponderance of photographic ‘missions’, whereby a collective of artists charged with documenting the nation’s shared common spaces traverse the territory with cameras in tow. From the Mission héliographique (1851) to the Mission photographique de la DATAR (1983-89), these projects have much to tell us about the place that landscape occupies in the national imaginary. This chapter surveys two of the most recent and most compelling photographic missions that set out to render the contours of the nation intelligible. While the Observatoire photographique du paysage, inaugurated in 1991, mobilizes a rigorously implemented procedure of rephotography to sensitize the public to the evolution of the French landscape, the group of photographers united since 2011 under the moniker France(s) territoire liquide has produced a decidedly more personal and subjective view of a territory in flux. Though they differ greatly in the way they envision space, this chapter suggests that both groups privilege the lesser seen, the interstitial, and the vernacular to provide a nuanced vision of France that challenges the most dominant conceptions and clichés—in the rhetorical and graphic sense of the word—of the nation as a whole.
法国摄影的历史一直以摄影“使命”的优势为标志，即一群艺术家带着相机穿越领土，记录国家共享的公共空间。从1851年的Mission hsamligraphique到1983-89年的Mission photographic que de la DATAR，这些项目向我们展示了景观在国家想象中所占据的位置。本章调查了最近和最引人注目的两个摄影任务，旨在使国家的轮廓清晰易懂。成立于1991年的Observatoire photohique du paysage，通过严格的重新摄影程序，使公众对法国景观的演变更加敏感，而自2011年以来，一群摄影师以法国(s)领土流动(France(s) territoliquide)的名义联合起来，对不断变化的领土产生了更加个人和主观的看法。尽管他们对空间的设想有很大的不同，但本章表明，这两个群体都优先考虑较少被看到的东西，间隙和方言，以提供一个微妙的法国视野，挑战最主要的概念和陈词滥调-在修辞和图形意义上的词-作为一个整体的国家。
{"title":"Picturing a Nation of Local Places in the Observatoire photographique du paysage and France(s) territoire liquide","authors":"Ari J. Blatt","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvqmp3xz.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvqmp3xz.13","url":null,"abstract":"The history of French photography has been marked by the preponderance of photographic ‘missions’, whereby a collective of artists charged with documenting the nation’s shared common spaces traverse the territory with cameras in tow. From the Mission héliographique (1851) to the Mission photographique de la DATAR (1983-89), these projects have much to tell us about the place that landscape occupies in the national imaginary. This chapter surveys two of the most recent and most compelling photographic missions that set out to render the contours of the nation intelligible. While the Observatoire photographique du paysage, inaugurated in 1991, mobilizes a rigorously implemented procedure of rephotography to sensitize the public to the evolution of the French landscape, the group of photographers united since 2011 under the moniker France(s) territoire liquide has produced a decidedly more personal and subjective view of a territory in flux. Though they differ greatly in the way they envision space, this chapter suggests that both groups privilege the lesser seen, the interstitial, and the vernacular to provide a nuanced vision of France that challenges the most dominant conceptions and clichés—in the rhetorical and graphic sense of the word—of the nation as a whole.","PeriodicalId":324635,"journal":{"name":"France in Flux","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114323701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Disuse and Affect:","authors":"D. Schilling","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvqmp3xz.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvqmp3xz.7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":324635,"journal":{"name":"France in Flux","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128136846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Index","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvqmp3xz.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvqmp3xz.14","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":324635,"journal":{"name":"France in Flux","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124254246","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Girlhood Luminosities and Topographical Politics:","authors":"Fiona Handyside","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvqmp3xz.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvqmp3xz.10","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":324635,"journal":{"name":"France in Flux","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128226325","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This chapter explores the ‘minor’ subjectivity of Sylvain George’s film-work, drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of minor literature and Henri Michaux’s ‘left-handed’ poetics. It claims that George’s unstable camera work, combined with the oscillation between the objectives of documentary observation and the sequences of lyrical expressionism, disrupt the traditional topographer’s position, resulting in a dynamic relation of inclusion. It closes by suggesting that this ‘minor’ mode, marked by its recurrent estrangement from the ‘real,’ is a crucial vehicle for capturing the complexity of the contemporary landscape of informal refugee camps in and around the cities of northern France.
{"title":"Sylvain George’s Minor Mode, or Cinema at the Margins of its Fragile Community","authors":"Anna-Louise Milne","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvqmp3xz.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvqmp3xz.9","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores the ‘minor’ subjectivity of Sylvain George’s film-work, drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of minor literature and Henri Michaux’s ‘left-handed’ poetics. It claims that George’s unstable camera work, combined with the oscillation between the objectives of documentary observation and the sequences of lyrical expressionism, disrupt the traditional topographer’s position, resulting in a dynamic relation of inclusion. It closes by suggesting that this ‘minor’ mode, marked by its recurrent estrangement from the ‘real,’ is a crucial vehicle for capturing the complexity of the contemporary landscape of informal refugee camps in and around the cities of northern France.","PeriodicalId":324635,"journal":{"name":"France in Flux","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114671411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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