Christophe Boulanger (France)

Film de papier (2006) video/Slide show 20 min presented in the mezzanine

‘Speech on Love Passions’ I have undertaken research for five years under the generic title Paper Film. Its object is, on the one hand, the study of the use of architecture and town planning as segregative tools and, on the other hand, a reflection on the concept from abroad. Its starting point is in Rotterdam where I discovered an enclosure built by the city in 2000 and reserved for prostitution, a eros centre which bears the street name in which it is located, the Keileweg. The entry gate, open from 6 o’clock of the evening to 6 o’clock of the morning, is next to a small building where prostitutes can get herion substitutes, hot coffee, and medical or psychological care. Any time out of the enclosure is prohibited by the law and liable to a fine. The Keileweg is also one of the principal centres for heroin traffic in the city, thus mixing the concepts of legal and illegal. There is a similar place in Amsterdam for illegal immigrant prostitutes; they are thus separated from the red light district. Starting with these 2 places, then looking at others, planned or completed, in Scotland, Italy and Russia, I noted several urban or architectural constants which I decided to gather under the concept of the architecture of separation. If the Keileweg is at the origin of the architecture of separation, I progressively moved my study towards systems and representations which draw a boundary line within the population, between the people who are integrated in the city and those whom are kept as outsiders. With the example the mass media which spectacularly crush any possibility of individual recognition with total medai over-exposure, particularly in the case of the eros centre. That feeds great contemporary fears, the first of which I will place, that from abroad, the wander and the stain. These phobias are also structured in an ignorance of prostitution and its history which seems not very present in the files or the great historical exhibitions apart from the "fokloric" evocation of the red districts and the images that it generates.

Christophe Boulanger - Translation: Anne-Sophie Bounioux