Note
27th October 2006
Players: France Inter, already one year old
When I was young (5 to 10 years old) it was a place that absolutely fascinated a number of the children in the neighborhood (Sarcelles, then Garges-Lès-Gonesses): it was the Fort de Stains. This abandoned fortress was several kilometers away from my family home, and to get there we had to go through barbed wire and walk along a path overgrown with brambles. But the place had a magic about it with, for example, a canon turret (I now know that it was called the Mougin turret), emptied of its cannons, but with a helicoid railing which led us to imagine how it worked. It was for us like the ceremonial hall of a fairy-tale castle.
Fort de Stains, copyright Chelles-fortifs
coupole mougin, source : lpracht.free.fr
Later, in Gonesse, it was the hypermarket Carrefour, one of the first to be built in France, which played the same role. It contained that blend of dream and of what was forbidden which always exercise a strong attraction. Can we experience the same fascination for places represented in videogames?
What sort of imagination can develop between military ruins and supermarket shelves?
supermarket, Avignon (Art Impact, MB)
[...] Réaliser, pour achever le projet nouveau réaliste et le transcender dans sa dimension urbaine et sociale, la compression d’un hypermarché. L’hypermarché Carrefour de Garges-Lès-Gonesse qui alimenta la poésie de mon adolescence transformé en une galette recouverte d’une épaisse couche vitrifiante. La surface résultante, d’une transparence et d’une brillance parfaite conservera pour les temps futurs le témoignage d’une abondance au détail. [...]
[...] Réaliser, pour achever le projet nouveau réaliste et le transcender dans sa dimension urbaine et sociale, la compression d’un hypermarché. L’hypermarché Carrefour de Garges-Lès-Gonesse qui alimenta la poésie de mon adolescence transformé en une galette recouverte d’une épaisse couche vitrifiante. La surface résultante, d’une transparence et d’une brillance parfaite conservera pour les temps futurs le témoignage d’une abondance au détail. [...]