A collective journey through the landscapes of the French Vexin

2 days walking and 1 night in a bivouac – 21 and 22 May 2022
Restitution exhibition on Saturday 4 June 2022

The context :

Invited for a mission residence in the French Vexin Regional Nature Park, the Gleaners, members of the Bruit du frigo collective, have been working for a year on the implementation of a walking expedition based on the stories of the inhabitants. In the course of their encounters, they have gleaned stories and anecdotes, and have collected intimate views of this territory. They walked through the French Vexin, which until then had been unknown to them, in search of these told places. In addition to gleaning the materials identified on the various sites they visited, they also collected immaterial material : the Gleaners became explorers to discover the little stories that forge this territory, places, landscapes but also myths that are passed on orally.

By focusing on “living heritage”, they wanted to address the theme of happy sobriety through the notion of collective adventure, sharing of local know-how and identification of the resources present.

The historical heritage of the NRP is strong and very present in people’s minds. Their first immersion in the Park quickly led them to the desire to get off the beaten track and to invite the inhabitants and partners to go in search of what they call “nuggets”.

By surveying and discovering the intimate treasures that were handed over, a route took shape. This is how the Gleaners’ walk was written, from thread to needle, from meetings to surveys, from discoveries to tastings.

Following the example of the situationist movement, the walk became an artistic object, a collective performance to draw the plural face of a territory.

In order to document this adventure, the Sapin collective accompanied the Gleaners’ walk to produce an audiovisual work, a testimony to this journey.

A collective exhibition documented the creative process and presented the different artistic productions created before and during the march.

Workshops :

In addition to surveying and discovering the territory, there were workshops on artistic practices with partner schools and associations. These workshops fed the collection of nuggets and made it possible to compose the scenography of this exhibition and the contents of the walkers’ kit. This approach made it possible to raise awareness of the territory’s resources, the reuse of materials as a creative medium and frugal printing techniques.

First of all, a correspondence was established between the schools of Vétheuil and Frémainville and the Gleaners. The artistic team sent 3 postcards. Each of them represented one or more elements of the landscape of the Regional Nature Park with a short text telling an anecdote. The classes then worked on the representation of these elements of the landscape with a constraint: represent them with only 5 colours: blue, yellow, orange, green and black.

The collected works were compiled to form a collective cartography, a sensitive interpretation of the vexinois landscape.

At the end of this exchange of letters, the Gleaners met with the children to work on the identity of the territory: How to situate oneself, to apprehend one’s environment? How can we give an account of a sensitive perception and illustrate our territory? A work on the coat of arms was carried out with the pupils using the cyanotype printing technique on fabric.

This work with the pupils led to a day of meetings, walks and workshops between the two schools on 20 May 2022. The pupils in turn gleaned natural material to make a collective tablecloth using the Japanese method of tataki zome.

These workshops were also conducted with the children of the association la Source Villarceaux.

At the same time, the Association Loisirs Culture de Champagne sur Oise (ALCC) made the blue tote bags thanks to the workshop les mains agiles. 150 bags were made. The Gleaners then invited the seamstresses to discover silk-screen printing during a specific workshop. The Walk coat of arms was able to decorate the fabric bags as well as the uniform of the gleaners.

The Gleaners’ walk :

The Gleaners’ walk is a collective expedition whose route was drawn from the conversations and nuggets collected.

On Saturday, two walks were proposed : one starting from Fremainville, the other from Vétheuil, which converged towards the same stopping point in Genainville. The evening banquet allowed the two groups to meet up and discuss the walk they had experienced before setting off again, together, on Sunday morning on a single route.

The two days of exploratory walking on 21 and 22 May invited the participants to connect the landscapes of the Vexin, to share a banquet, to spend the night in the heart of a 13th century farmhouse and then to set off again together, grouped together, to reach one of the emblematic and historic sites of the French Vexin : the domain of Villarceaux.

In turn, the participants were invited to become Gleaners of this territory, to set out to collect images, memories, raw and sensory material to unearth or share their nugget of the French Vexin!

They are 100 walkers who met to give life to this adventure and share with the Gleaners a piece of the territory of the French Vexin. Thank you to them and to the guides for their enthusiasm and the moments they shared.

This approach, called a residency-mission, has been organised since 2018, in partnership with the Ministry of Culture – Île-de-France Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs, the Val d’Oise Department and the French Vexin Regional Nature Park. The objectives are to strengthen the presence of artists and to create a dynamic by encouraging meetings between actors and inhabitants through artistic and cultural awareness.