HAND GAME …
Augmented view of the Mauzac detention heart. This jail, inbuilt 1984 on the initiative of Robert Badinter, is a novel try in France to arrange house in order to advertise the social lifetime of prisoners. Because the 19th century, and virtually because the origins of the penal jail, the penitentiary ideology has been primarily based on the separation of prisoners, for worry of the contagion of deviant habits. The architectural design of the Mauzac jail was entrusted to the company Christian Demonchy and Noëlle Janet, which till then had specialised in vacation facilities. They have been specifically the architects of the Mediterranean golf equipment. The analogy of a jail with a vacation heart didn’t fail to impress criticism, and a sure hilarity, through the inauguration of the jail. The analogy is nevertheless very critical: it was obligatory to search out architects able to pondering the group of life in a comparatively small house for a reasonably very long time.
“We have been guided by a easy precept: in a detention heart, it’s important to group the whole lot in the identical house. You need to be capable to discover the whole lot obligatory for day by day wants: sport, coaching, canteen, library, and so on. As in some vacation golf equipment. I say the whole lot, as a result of in jail, to his different ills is added monotony. Every thing is dictated, repetitive, and it's the alternative of what the jail must be. Our idea was that the inmate shouldn’t lose his sense of duty and that he might train most freedom inside the jail partitions. »Robert Badinter

AN OPTICAL MACHINE
Face-to-face, erected on concrete blocks, these images signify the inside of the oldest constructing, nonetheless in use, of the Caen detention heart. On the higher ground, the projection of a balustrade now occupied by a inexperienced plant, constituted an altar from which a priest might ship a sermon addressed to prisoners who listened to him standing on the brink of their cells. The architect defined on this gadget:
"We imagined adjusting the cutaway doorways of the cells and making them open from the skin, in order that by creating them at an angle of ninety levels the prisoners, positioned on the entrance to their cells , would see the priest proper in entrance of them with out it being attainable for them to note one another, due to the impediment which might be against them by the doorways themselves. "
Because the publication of Surveiller et punir in 1975, the outline of jail architectures typically refers to Michel Foucault's analyzes to retain solely the precept of generalized and whole surveillance, a panoptic imaginative and prescient during which nothing escapes the attention of the supervisor. . As the instance of the Caen detention heart reveals, the truth is extra ambiguous. The architect didn’t simply contemplate the standpoint of the supervisor. He was involved about what prisoners would see or not see who’re most frequently hidden from view when they’re of their cell, door closed. The prisoner is there to do penance. He have to be alone in entrance of himself, reduce off from others whom he should not even see, so as to atone for his fault with the only assist of faith.
Photographing freely in such an optical machine instantly appeared to me not possible. The answer that was imposed to make pictures of them, was to take alternately two factors of view, that of the prisoner and that of the supervisor.

THE TIME OF WALLS
Non secular observe remains to be a priority in the present day when constructing new prisons. Once I visited the central home of Condé-sur-Sarthe, inaugurated in 2013, I questioned concerning the architectural decisions of the worship corridor: the rise in quantity of the room and the trinity prompt by the association of the home windows appeared to me as an insistent will to sign inside an structure globally decided by purposeful and safety constraints.
Throughout my go to, the supervisor who accompanied me mentioned to me, "Muslims don’t come right here as a result of the Imam (chosen by the jail administration) will not be radical sufficient. And I had kept away from reacting to say that maybe this too marked house of the indicators of Christianity didn’t go well with them. To inform the reality, I don't know as a result of I haven't had the chance to debate this situation with Muslim prisoners.
I wished to do one thing with this story. The descriptive view that I got down to obtain to provide an correct account of the structure appeared to me inadequate to account for the problems that had arisen, maybe too distanced. So, I settled at the hours of darkness room of the laboratory with all of the paperwork within the file. To consider it, I put the issue on the enlarger desk, in search of an inventive answer quite than an ideological place. And it was within the custom of "marginal remarks" that I discovered it.

Optical print on black and white argentic paper after 6 negatives and numerous paperwork printed on rhodoid: an architectural view of the worship corridor of the central home of condé-sur-sarthe; a screenshot of of this identical place offered on the web site of the newspaper Le Monde and captioned: "The worship corridor, with none distinctive signal, for Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, …" (in high proper); a cut-up of this legend entitled "What to applicable? " (under) ; "Corrective sport", after a quote from Le Corbusier; the damaging of an engraving by architect Harou-Romain depicting a prisoner from behind in his cell in prayer place dealing with a chapel seen by means of the gates of his cell (on the left). Format: 100x106x7cm
BEHIND THE MIRROR
Once I thought-about organizing photographic workshops in jail, I used to be reluctant to think about them as an imaginary escape supplied to prisoners entangled of their guilt, their boredom, their ache. I envisioned these moments of encounter because the place for reflection on the issues of representations of the jail world that I used to be asking myself. I imagined having the ability to confront them with the prisoners' expertise of jail house, even perhaps topic them to their experience.
This metaphor of imaginary escape got here again regardless of myself, in touch with a few of those that had agreed to work with me. I will need to have realized that it corresponded to a significant necessity of their dwelling. That is the case with Emile, who for the previous eleven years has been scrutinizing geography maps and satellite tv for pc views of the earth so as to reveal within the structure of reliefs and coastlines, animal, human or monstrous figures which he associates with tales mythological of varied origins. Utilizing quite simple pc instruments, he redraws its contours. A couple of months after our assembly on the central home of Condé-sur-Sarthe, reviewing in my workshop the photographs that Emile had produced, I seen that he had seized in an uncommon method an adjunct that I had introduced. He repeatedly pictured himself photographing in a big mirror which he positioned in a number of areas of the jail. Confronted with the insistence of this gesture, I informed myself that he had tried to go to the opposite aspect of the mirror. This dive into one other house subsequently appeared to me analogous to the improbable maps he made in his cell. To make one thing of it, I introduced these numerous parts to the laboratory, and, carried by the intoxication to immerse myself with him on this imaginary, I manipulated them beneath the enlarger searching for an equal of l psychological house of which he had entrusted me with fragments.

The picture of the person working on a treadmill is the results of a Sybillin dialogue on the boundaries of using images. When requested who would comply with be recognizable in pictures, Paul replied, "You possibly can me and you’ll in my cell, however I don't wish to be photographed in my cell." Then he had dodged any request for clarification, leaving me to interpret his phrases alone.
To be photographed in a cell is to be photographed whereas one is locked up; perhaps even be locked twice, by the partitions and by the perimeters of the body. This analogy between framing and confining had been an issue for me which, at first, had made it not possible for me even to take a photograph in jail. To attempt to overcome this problem, I needed to discover formal options on the bottom to counsel the off-frame of a picture, or in my workshop, options to framing.

IN SUPPORT
Relatively than utilizing images to see the confinement, I wished to make it a device for change, thought and motion. I even hoped that it might thus turn out to be an instrument of emancipation, if not of subversion and even of resistance. In any case, it’s the photographic exercise itself which has turn out to be my topic. It was not a lot a query of bringing jail realities into the digital camera, however of bringing a digital camera into jail actuality. Subsequently, the analogy of the cell with the room required discovering a powerful answer to point out the house. And listed here are the detours it took to point out a cell.
Within the ladies's ward of the Rouen jail, I wished to return to the essential details of the state of affairs: our bodies and structure. To be glad with it, it was to return advert nauseam, to the illustration of confinement. So what to do? The connection to structure is a query of scale whose physique is the measure. On the Caen detention heart, a prisoner had proven me that he might contact the 2 reverse partitions of his cell by spreading his arms, that in brief not solely was it not large, but in addition that the cell was adjusted to the scale of his physique. I had retained the thought of measuring house with the physique. Lucile went as far as to measure herself towards it.

Since 2016, I’ve photographed in 7 prisons, taking an curiosity within the relationship of our bodies to those architectures whereas questioning concerning the prospects of images to doc these areas. I needed to do away with the thought of representing confinement normally to watch particular locations,
with their historical past and their functioning, and questioning the itself: thwarting the stereotypes hooked up to jail images, integrating the constraints imposed by jail guidelines, scuffling with the analogy between framing and confining, contemplating the standpoint the perfect specialists in these areas, the prisoners. To answer the invitation to exhibit this work in an previous jail remodeled into an artwork heart, I needed to have in mind the historical past and traits of this house charged with the very indicators of my topic.
Seen from the sky, the brand new constructing of the artwork heart is sort of a metallic field that might have been positioned there, in an previous promenade. From the within, at eye stage, the notion of house is much more disturbing. On every of the 4 partitions of the exhibition corridor, giant image home windows provide contradictory views, huge however not distant, the place the attention instantly comes up towards the stone perimeter partitions with freshly renovated joints, barely a meter away home windows.
Sliding image rails can help you open or hinder these home windows, to have roughly wall floor, roughly gentle, and if I dare say, to view outwards. The selection is proscribed: see white partitions or see stone partitions. What did the architect liable for designing the renovation wish to do? And why did you impose, for your complete future lifetime of the artwork heart, this option to open or shut these blocked home windows? Bear in mind historical past, in fact, however what place for the current?
For the exhibition I’m getting ready, guests will be capable to flow into on this type of outside passageway outlined by the house between the partitions of the previous promenade courtyard and people of the exhibition corridor, to seek the advice of archival paperwork on the historical past of Guingamp jail organized behind the home windows used on the again like giant vertical home windows. The development of the Guingamp jail – one of many first cell prisons in France – seems to be a turning level within the historical past of jail structure: that is the second when the concept that separates the prisoners to keep away from the contagion of crime, restrict social life, categorize prisoners, all issues that persist in our present jail system with out ever being questioned, or maybe solely as soon as, with the Mauzac detention heart in 1984, designed to advertise the social life and the autonomy of prisoners. In Guingamp, I’ll current for the primary time some pictures of this experimental jail.
Within the heart of the exhibition corridor, a too giant desk (2m excessive) surrounded by two chairs on which guests shall be invited to climb to search out the pairs of pictures from a reminiscence sport representing all of the objects given to prisoners upon their arrival within the cell. This large prompt by this desk out of scale, it’s on the identical time this indefinite occasion which organizes life, designs areas, determines the checklist of obligatory objects; it’s the architect of the artwork heart, that of the jail, of any jail, it’s Robert Badinter holding in his arms the mannequin of the jail of Mauzac, it is usually the one who, imagining this exhibition has objects there.
Whilst a easy customer, coming into jail makes one significantly delicate to the relationships of scale between the physique and structure. This report has turn out to be the topic of my work. I’ve noticed these areas as they exert stress on our bodies which expertise them, measure them. Within the workshop, I then apprehensive concerning the objects that turn out to be my pictures, and specifically their format, their relation of scale with the dimensions of my physique and my workshop.
Whether or not it's a jail or an artwork heart, all structure creates house. It imposes its scale. Neither enlargement nor discount, it’s scale 1. Pictures is content material to supply a metaphorical window on the world, roughly enlarged, on roughly giant scale. Briefly, structure is its personal referent. She is within the current whereas the represents. This exhibition shall be a sport with house, a component little doubt misplaced prematurely, between images and structure.

MAXENCE RIFFLET
Maxence Rifflet was born in Paris in 1978 the place he lives. For the previous twenty years, he has carried out analysis utilizing the technique of images, video and writing, tackling numerous conditions and questions with a continuing curiosity for methods of residing. He sees images as a lot as a recording and outline device as as a lightweight, plastic and materials hint. Thus, his work combines investigations with excessive documentary precision and a demanding and experiential workshop observe, from fantastic artwork printing.
Pictures is a device of interplay for him. Attentive to these he meets within the subject, his work typically combines a number of factors of view on the identical actuality. This change course of is the supply of heterogeneous types and unpublished data.
Throughout the Rado group, he responded, between 2011 and 2014 to a public order from the Nationwide Middle for the Plastic Arts, materialized by an exhibition on the Worldwide Middle for Artwork and Panorama of Vassivière in 2014. On this event, he produced the movie The sorting employees, a 16-minute loop that describes, as shut as attainable to the our bodies, the day by day work of women and men on a round waste sorting chain. Between 2007 and 2010, he centered his analysis on two picturesque areas: the so-called "vacationer" route which hyperlinks Cherbourg to Coutances, and the "loops" of the Seine; he then produced a set of photographic work from a mirrored image on
the panorama. Two exhibitions have been offered, one in Cherbourg, the opposite in Rouen, accompanied by the e-book Une route, un chemin (particular point out of the 2010 Nadar Prize) printed by Le Level du jour. In 2006, he exhibited on the worldwide images conferences in Arles a set of pictures on the mutations within the Yangzi valley in China.
Concurrently this work, he carried out quite a few creative experimentation tasks inside instructional and social buildings.
The e-book Fais un fils et jjet-à la mer (2004), printed with Yto Barrada and Anaïs Masson, retraces an experiment carried out in Marseille and Tangier with Moroccan adolescents whose photographic observe is turning into the topic of a questioning on unlawful immigration. Correspondances (2009) is the results of a school residency that mixes photographic observe and letter-writing exchanges primarily based on a questioning of on a regular basis life.
Winner of the third version of the Cnap public fee "Les regards du grand Paris", he’s at present establishing a portrait of the town from the journeys of cleansing employees throughout the town ("Des mondes parallèles", 2019). He additionally teaches on the Caen-Cherbourg Larger College of Artwork and Media.
USEFUL INFORMATION
The Grand Authorizer and different jail information
Exhibition offered from March 14 to June 7, 2020
Opening on Saturday March 14 at four p.m. Assembly with Maxence Rifflet, artist and Christian Demonchy, architect
Saturday Could 2 at 6 p.m. Assembly with Jean-François Chevrier, artwork historian and critic and Maxence Rifflet.
GwinZegal Artwork Middle four, rue Auguste Pavie, Guingamp
Open Wednesday to Sunday, 2 p.m. to six:30 p.m. / Free admission
Outdoors these hours, free excursions are organized for teams by contacting the GwinZegal artwork heart prematurely.
Telephone. 02 96 44 27 78 / mail: information@gwinzegal.com