Denicolai & Provoost (Simona Denicolai, Ivo Provoost) · Antoinette Jattiot · Nord (Valentin Bollaert, Pauline Fockedey) · Spec uloos (Sophie Boiron, Pierre Huyghebaert)
Published on Apr 13, 2024
Modified 5 months ago
a foreword
a scenario
when giants play with scales
chapter Leuven
seven communities
terroirs, rhizomes and utopias
chapter lago di Resia
chapter Padova
the great body of the world
chapter Venezia
many stories
the carnival of microbes
several figures
make do
credits
Minister-President of the Government of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, in charge of International Relations
Published on Apr 8, 2024
Modified 5 months ago
The Biennale di Venezia has, over the years, established itself as the ne plus ultra for artistic and visual creation in European and international circles. The Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, alternating with the Flemish Community, assumes responsibility for selecting the artistic project to represent our country at this prestigious event. The Biennale di Venezia ensures extraordinary visibility for the most diverse trends in contemporary art.
The choice we had to make, as you can imagine, was no easy one. Our government therefore proceeded with a public call for tenders in compliance with the rules relating to this decision-making process. In the end, it was the multidisciplinary Petticoat Government collective (Sophie Boiron, Valentin Bollaert, Simona Denicolai, Pauline Fockedey, Pierre Huyghebaert, Antoinette Jattiot and Ivo Provoost) that was selected to represent the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles and Wallonia-Brussels International at the 2024 Biennale di Venezia.
It is with enthusiasm that I invite you to discover the creativity and originality of Petticoat Government. For my part, I admit to being particularly sensitive to its popular component. Indeed, successfully combining multidisciplinary visual practices with the authenticity of local folklore constitutes, in my eyes, a real challenge. Nothing less than the ‘giants’ of Belgian and European folklore were needed to achieve this feat: Akerbeltz of Mutriku (Basque Country, ES), Babette of Tourcoing (FR), Dame Nuje Patat of Baaigem (BE), Edgar l’motard of Steenvoorde (FR), Julia of Charleroi (BE), Mettekoe of Petit-Enghien (BE) and, without forgetting, Erasmus of Anderlecht (BE).
The similar cross-cultural elements highlighted, in various ways, throughout the project, along with its relationship with the associated urban localities and the form in which it culminates in Venezia, will serve to demonstrate, in addition to having an aesthetic impact, the essential societal role of works of art: to create bridges between artistic disciplines, between cities, between countries and, above all, between human beings.
Vice-President and Minister of Culture of the Government Wallonia-Brussels Federetion
Published on Mar 21, 2024
Modified 5 months ago
Our giants are on a journey... Edgar, Babette, Mettekoe and the others have arrived in Venezia, host to one of the world’s most famous exhibitions. They have invited us to follow them on this unusual trip that highlights our intangible heritage, allowing it to resonate and dialogue with the visual arts in their most contemporary forms.
Through the ambitious cultural project of Petticoat Government, we may participate in this collective journey, to follow the chapters of this story that has gradually unfolded until the giants’ arrival at the Belgian pavilion in Venice, and to celebrate together this improbable and unexpected meeting of popular cultures and contemporary arts, in the emblematic Giardini that host the 60th Biennale di Venezia.
This extraordinary, outside-the-box project is one expression of the ambition of the present legislature to ever better safeguard our intangible heritage, this so-called popular culture that transcends time while remaining connected to its day and age.
For the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, this folklore and these oral traditions are precious assets. What we refer to as our intangible heritage is this living culture made up of stories big and small, of deeply human links, of knowledge passed from generation to generation. It constitutes the traces of our contemporary times, in the same way as the physical and architectural heritage that surrounds us; these traces define what we are and what we wish to hand down to future generations. It is a precise mix of consistency and evolution, including, in particular, contemporary concerns for equality or non-discrimination, especially regarding women, too long kept aside.
Like folklore itself, which endures by evolving over time, our legislation had to evolve. In 2023, a new decree on the protection of intangible cultural heritage was adopted, to better identify our living heritage and better resonate with our contemporary values – and in consonance with our ethical charter based on the fundamental principles upheld by UNESCO.
It was high time to restore the letters patent of popular practices that had long been discredited. Not only does our heritage reflect the living character and cultural wealth of our region, but it also constitutes, through its unifying character, a valuable lever for social and intergenerational cohesion.
The showcasing of this through the pioneering and experimental project proposed by the multidisciplinary collective of Sophie Boiron, Valentin Bollaert, Simona Denicolai, Pauline Fockedey, Pierre Huyghebaert, Antoinette Jattiot and Ivo Provoost was therefore timely and contributes to making our Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles more widely known.
a
foreword
Published on Apr 8, 2024
Modified 3 months ago
The off-center map illustrates the giants’ hometowns, the journey’s stages to Venice, and the exploratory visits that took place beforehand. ⚀ PG + LMNO
A scale of 1:1 for author and theorist Stephen Wright is ‘working with’ realities instead of representing them in formats assisted by the art world.
The first piece of cultural equipment was no doubt a receptacle. ᓓ1
It’s with a basket that the Petticoat Government story begins.
The folkloric giants that tower over you have each existed for a greater or lesser number of years. They were imagined, thought out and produced by groups of people brought together by a creative act and are the outcome of craft skills, like basket-weaving for the skirt (the basket onto which is placed the bust with the head on top). These giants were formed by the lively communities around them, and by the culture of the non-specialist amateurs who bore them out of passion. We met them and chose them, gathered them together and travelled with them from Belgium, France and Spain’s Basque Country to the Alps and then the Lagoon of Venezia.
These different chapters crossed several climates and landscapes. These actions and these groupings have created in their movements and oral expression the temporary reality with which you interact today. Artistic production and its mechanisms have certain limits but are also a timely vector of legitimisation. Born up by these, we choose to come to terms with reality, to work with what exists, rather than representing it. After the Biennale di Venezia (20/04-24/11/2024), the giants, matrices of stories and know-how, will return home, enriched by this new chapter that will have participated in their local mythologies. They will regain their power, their primary meaning and their social roles by returning to participate in popular festivals.
The seven giants embody a form of hyper-locality. They each represent a human, an animal or a plant figure that directly echoes the memories, desires and concerns of the communities who created and care for them. If the tradition of giants is found across the world, they come from the most ‘giantised’ regions. Without speaking the same language, freeing themselves from national borders, these and thousands of other giants play the same mediating and unifying role. The shared nature of popular culture renders obsolete the idea of a vernacular identity limited to a particular territory.
Giants are bigger than we are. They reflect our appetite for excess. But their size is to be put into perspective. Relationships of scale remind us that we need a reference point to consider what is largest or smallest. Facing mountains, at the foot of the campanile or under the rotating press in Padova, in the crowd or next to the dancing child in Mons, the giants successively assume different measurements and dimensions. ℘ℊ prompts us to figure out ‘how to see the same thing differently’.
The giant Erasmus is being carried by its community and the collective onto the ice of Lake Resia. ⚀ PG + LMNO
The project’s title – literally, ‘government in petticoats’ – refers to several historical stories involving groups of women exerting an influence significant enough to temporarily overturn power relationships. The prefix petti evokes in French a notion of size. Etymologically, it appears to be a linguistic transfer towards English(petty coat, meaning ‘little coat’).
Petticoat Government is a choral work, in movement, led by a collective and multidisciplinary body that incarnates the possibility of shared, joyful governance, and which, in certain ways, calls to mind the ‘joyful militancy’ of Silvia Federici. ᓓ2 The position of author is shared by seven members (Sophie Boiron, Valentin Bollaert, Simona Denicolai, Pauline Fockedey, Pierre Huyghebaert, Antoinette Jattiot and Ivo Provoost) who form a team, assisted and accompanied by many others.
The wicker basket forms the traditional structure of giants in Belgium and Northern France. In Spain, it is most often wooden trestles. However, a diversification of materials and artisanal techniques used is now being observed. ⚀ LP
In the final published catalogue, we read about the ins and outs of these relationships. In its initial version, as printed on-demand in the pavilion, the catalogue consists of notes written by the Young Storytellers and contributions from authors, researchers, anthropologists, socio-cultural facilitators and art critics: Manah Depauw, eli lebailly and Maximilien Atangana, Silvia Mesturini, Alexis Zimmer. These invitations to authors from disciplines outside the field of art, strictly speaking, reflect the diversity of the project’s biotope. These were formalised following a series of convivial meals, nourished by exchanges on each other’s research interests, making it possible to forge fruitful links between the subject areas. These encounters influenced our way of seeing and constructing our story. Ultimately, they are part of this long process and of the ongoing non-material work, of which the experiments for and the structure of the project are already the outcome. The content of the final published version will be augmented throughout the presentation at the Biennale.
The sense of feast or joyous celebration – festa godereccia – emanating from Petticoat Government is reflected in the Venetian term garanghelo. Some sources say this is related to geringel, a word from the Tyrolean dialect meaning ‘dancing in a circle’. From gigantic ritual dances to the dances of the festa dedicata to the rhythms of the festive picnic in Resia, this scenario leads us to another encounter with the festive party, in the sense of political action, where dancing in a circle gives the feeling of being really alive, where dancing is part of establishing a space freed from an institution or a form of consumption. In this perspective at the Biennale, the festival establishes new gestures, replacing the rites imposed by the event in which the scenario takes place. It punctuates an organisation of time essential to social life. The giants feature regularly in festive outings on universal dates in the cycle of life and nature, around fires or during carnivals. Their neo-folk-loric manifestations, in relation to contemporary realities, highlight stories of survival. Through the evolution of these forms of celebrations and popular gatherings, we could imagine, like William T. Lhamon, a folk without lore – a word designating ‘a tissue of knowledge and stories transmitted by tradition’. ᓓ3 And by returning to gestures, do we produce a renewed and nuanced circulation of knowledge between places and the communities inhabiting them?
See Ursula K. Le Guin,‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’, in Denise Du Pont (ed.), Women of Vision (New York: St. Martin’s Press), 1988.
See Silvia Federici, Par-delà les frontières du corps (Quimperlé: Éditions divergences), 2020.
See Jacques Rancière, preface in William T. Lhamon Jr., Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 1998.
The group made a visit to Dorian Demarcq’s studio, a «facteur».
a
scenario
Published on Apr 8, 2024
Modified 5 months ago
Speculative drawings foretell the reality of each stage of the journey. They are working tools that anticipate viewpoints, whether real or imagined. ⚀ PG + LMNO
Seven people who know each other from earlier collaborations come together to form a multidisciplinary collective
The collective attends the presentation of the giants calendar in Mons (BE)
Giant makers and experts on giants are contacted
The file with the draft scenario is submitted
Ladybugs appear; magic signs multiply
The project is approved and officially accepted by its commissioners
The team gets organised at the Rue des Éperonniers
The method is defined, research refines the choices of accomplices and agreements are drawn up to record the loans
Meetings mark the start of production
Researchers collaborate around meals
The Young Curators Storytellers are selected to research, write and co-construct ℘ℊ
The giants to participate are announced in local newspapers
The national and international press relay the ministerial introduction and the official presentation of ℘ℊ
The giants’ departures are celebrated
The collective does not leave on foot
One hundred and thirty people embark in the direction of the Resia Pass
The giants, placed in boxes, are transported independently
One afternoon, the giants dance on the frozen Lago di Resia
The group accompanying them visits the Gazzetta printing press, where the giants continue to dance
The partly mounted giants cross the lagoon of Venezia on large boats
The giants are raised aloft, the doorways lowered, the façade adorned with a skirt and the benches installed along the walls
The Young Curators Storytellers set up in the Pavilion
Catalogues are printed in the copyshop and pg scale rulers are sold
The Young Curators Storytellers transmit and collect stories in Venezia
The Biennale closes
BPS22 in Charleroi hosts a discursive, graphic, festive programme
FRAC in Dunkerque imagines a giant ball
Le calendrier, Carnaval, essais de mythologie populaire, Claude Gaignebet et Marie-Claude Florentin, 1974.
Dame Nuje Patat crossing the Alps. ⚀ PG + LMNO
⚀ PG + LMNO
Visiting Dorian Demarcq, 06/2023.
⚀ PG + LMNO
⚀ LP
when giants play with scales
Silvia Mesturini Cappo
Published on Mar 21, 2024
Modified 5 months ago
Ucayali Giant, 2020, Ucayali, Perú. ⚀ SMC
Seen from a human perspective, giants are huge. We need ladders to clamber up and take care of them. What kind of extra-human scale does a giant require? What can continue to function as the collective, artisanal manufacturer of something beyond the scale of an individual human life?
In a world never conceived of as given in advance or as capable of taking care of itself, societies maintain themselves at the same time as they maintain the world. We cannot care for human lives without devoting attention to non-human ones, to their interweaving and collaboration, to the demands of their different ways of existing, which, together, ‘make up life’. In this way of inhabiting the world, the ‘human’ way of life is inextricably intertwined with other forms of life and with the relational demands this interweaving imposes. Collective practices, more or less ritualised, more or less spelled out, seek to maintain this interweaving, this inscription in a living fabric in which very different scales – giant lives and imperceptibly small lives – coexist. In these landscapes inhabited by incessant, multidirectional and uncontrollable collaborations, the human scale dances with its accomplices. For some beings, humans could be likened to youngest siblings who still have so much to learn. We could call this the point of view of plants or mountains or forests. These great, old beings, vitally interweaving through the eras of the world, might then be concerned about the newcomers and deem it worth the effort to help them become bigger. But how does one ‘come into being’ in the company of these large-scale entities? How do we inhabit them and let ourselves be inhabited by them? How do we become a human community allied to a particular mountain? One that lives by learning from a particular plant? One that collaborates as the keeper of a particular forest?
In her recent work De la génération: Enquête sur sa disparition et son remplacement par la production (On generation: Investigation into its disappearance and replacement by production), philosopher Émilie Hache offers a perspective on the impasse in which our modern way of life finds itself through the contrast of two models, two ways of being a society: the ‘production’ model of industrial societies and the ‘generative’ model of subsistence societies. The latter do not take the world as created, once and for all. Their practices aim at the generation and regeneration of a world in a constant process of becoming, while respecting the relationships that hold it together. In contrast, and in continuity with the eco-feminist current, Hache describes industrial society as a world viewed from an outside perspective: from a position of superiority that legitimises the ongoing search for what can be extracted and become a product: ‘A world that considers itself limitless, believing that it has at its disposal infinite reserves of energy, land or even hands.’ ᓓ1 This is a world concerned with ‘emancipation or domination’ ᓓ2, but where the attention paid to (re)generation disappears. Drawing on Ivan Illich’s reflections, Hache combines ‘generative’ with ‘vernacular’ to designate what a society can produce in a logic that is opposite that of the commodity, and that links to this ‘earlier’ way of life, which, as the Latin word vernaculus reminds us, indicates ‘what is native to a particular place’. ᓓ3
Where can we locate this non-productive, generative way of doing and living today? Are there any societies preserved from money, from the production of goods, from the extraction of resources? No, but even within the most industrial societies, there are still giants playing with scales. They are like threads to cling to and with which to continue to weave practices, stories and objects in a generative manner. For my part, as someone familiar with certain societies, people and territories in the Peruvian Amazon that could be described as indigenous, or autochthonous, I view production and generation as mutually antagonistic modes that inevitably meet and confront each other in the lives of both individuals and communities. They cut across territories, practices and mentalities. The one manifests the other when it emerges that yet another entity is being transformed into a commodity, that yet another collaborative venture is coming undone by capitalist extraction. Voices then rise to defend a particular plant, a particular river, a particular mountain, a particular community and its way of crafting a territory, sometimes in the name of an indigenous perspective of the world, sometimes in the name of preserving the forest and life itself. How can we make those who treat plant beings as lesser forms of life – exploitable and controllable – understand that it is possible to cultivate strong relational ties with them? How can we make people sense that a plant can be a fundamental accomplice in the care given to the constant (re)generation of the world, that a territory can be something other than a plot of land surrounded by a border and under human control that can be envisaged only in terms of its productivity and commercial value?
By comparing the logic of the forest to the logic of the plantation, Anna L. Tsing also invites us to discover a contrast of models. ᓓ4 Opposing the uncontrollable intermingling and interspecies collaboration that makes a forest what it is, we have the tabula rasa of deforested soil on which plants imported, standardised and reproduced by humans are maintained by a workforce that is also extracted and displaced, induced to become part of a supply chain. Mastered beings conceived as self-sufficient are then juxtaposed on a soil that must produce and from which what will be extracted is an already captured benefit of the plantation’s master. ᓓ5 At the heart of the plantation logic is scalability, a principle that attributes value to that which can change scale without needing to transform itself. It is a model that makes people, products and territories homogenised and interchangeable, a framework that presses into solitude individualised beings hypothetically autonomous. Alone in the face of collectives that have become more abstract and societies that have become machine-like systems, industrial giants break scales down in the name of their one and only scalable measure.
What if a collective could be a giant? A potato-head giant for those who honour potato cultivation at a small local market? A giant for an association of friends? Or giants magnifying, in village parades, women working in local factories? Or again, what scale do we attribute to a half-goat-half-human, a friend of animals and witches, a member of a family of four giants that has never left its territory? My guess is that their gigantism confronts scalability, that the links and collaborations that constitute their being, their stories and their microbiome make it a (re)generative thread we can embrace in a world stifled by production. Just as subsistence communities come together around generative practices that constantly oscillate from one scale of living to another, could giants be generative beings that, in village processions, remind us of our ability to play with our own power of manufacturing scales?
Current research, which combines agronomy, medicine and ecology and makes them transdisciplinary, addresses the interest of conceiving humans, plants and animals as holobionts, ᓓ6 beings that can be understood as composed of two symbiotic parts: a host part, multicellular and playing the role of infrastructure, and a microbiotic part, much more important in terms of number of entities essential to the vital functions of the host. The host does not constitute a boundary within which the microbiome lives. On the contrary, the microbiome is particularly present on the skin and in the digestive canal, where there are the greatest number of encounters, of potential conversations with places, people and ways of life. The figure of the holobiont helps us to conceive of beings made up more of relationships than of autonomy, who compose and decompose their hosts while composing themselves and who recompose themselves while composing the world in which they participate. The more biodiverse and complex the ecosystems that humans inhabit, the richer their microbiomes. The destruction of forests and ecosystems is reflected in microbiotic devastation on a human scale.
Outer forest and inner forests play with scales in an extensive living symbiotic continuity that questions what it is to be ‘indigenous’: identity, belonging or constitutive consubstantiality? Bodies without boundaries emerge from the complex collaborations of which they become hosts. Bodies with multiple but non-scalable scales play with their innards and their costumes, made of the entities they take care of. Popular culture or indigenous culture, cultures from here, there and elsewhere, the ability to make oneself large and march in a parade while cultivating a discreet and unpretentious way of merging and blending with others in a space of refuge.
The dispositifs of the ‘compositional arts’ seek to activate the ‘mutual sensitivity’ of participants’ words and perceptions. This sensitivity is not ‘created’ by the dispositif: the constraints this dispositif imposes aim rather to battle ways of doing, of behaving, of speaking which anaesthetise and confine each person in their own self. A composition does not need to be explained, only cultivated. And what you get is a metamorphosis: the situation that divided has gained the power to make sense in common. It has become the subject that makes us think and imagine. ᓓ7
Are we the giants of our microbiomes? Are we the deployment on another scale of a multitude of beings constantly moving between ourselves and others, creating compositions and re-compositions with the places we inhabit? Could we, human beings born in the age of production, create giants who can become hosts to our collaborative practices, our generative memories and our determination to regenerate the world? These are wishes in the form of questions to close this text accompanying these giants on their extraordinary journey.
Émilie Hache, De la génération: Enquête sur sa disparition et son remplacement par la production,Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond (Paris: La Découverte), 2024, p. 12.
Ibid., p. 18.
Ibid., p. 35.
See Anna L. Tsing, Le champignon de la fin du monde: Sur la possibilité de vivre dans les ruines du capitalisme, Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond (Paris: La Découverte), 2015.
See Tsing 2015.
‘What are holobionts and why is INRAE interested in them?’, INRAE (accessed 1 February 2024). See also Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, ‘Digestive System: The Forest Within’, in Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice (London: Penguin Books), 2021, pp. 111–48.
Isabelle Stengers, Réactiver le sens commun: Lecture de Whitehead en temps de débâcle,Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond (Paris: La Découverte), 2020, p. 206.
Biography
Silvia Mesturini Cappo has a PhD in anthropology and is a teacher and researcher. She experiments with different forms of writing and the creation of research tools at the intersection of human sciences, the health and care sector, indigenous knowledge and the epistemology of science. She situates her research between science and the arts in the fight against contemporary forms of extraction, colonisation and destruction of (bio)diversity. She teaches at the erg - École de Recherche Graphique of Bruxsels and at UCLouvain.
Acknowledgements
From September 2019 to February 2023, my research in the Peruvian Amazon was carried out through the generous support of ERC Starting Grant no. 757589 and framed by the project ‘Healing Encounters: Reinventing Indigenous Medicine in the Clinic and Beyond’ directed by Emilia Sanabria and based at CERMES3 (Université Paris Cité, EHESS, CNRS, INSERM). This project has hosted an in-depth reflection on the possible links between collaborative research with indigenous experts and experimental methodologies in anthropology that address questions of scale and scalability through feminist epistemologies and decolonial perspectives. Visit encounters for more details.
Nightmare on the non-divinatory ice. ⚀ PG + LMNO
chapter
Leuven
Published on Apr 8, 2024
Modified 3 months ago
The flag is unfolded in the schoolyard next to the flagpole. ⚀ Jente Waerzeggers
The collective produced a flag at the invitation of 019 (Gent) and Off the grid (Cas-co Leuven). Its presentation signalled the public launch of Petticoat Government. After Leuven, the flag (an object of self-determination) travelled to the Alps to metamorphose into a tablecloth for a festive picnic at Lago di Resia, before being hung as a curtain in the Pavilion. The length of the flag is calculated to prevent it from hitting the façade of the school in Leuven. Its width corresponds to the height of the side of the Pavilion.
There is a procedure for folding and unfolding the ℘ℊ flag, so that everyone can use it regardless of the type of ceremony. The flag is white and rectangular, and its construction corresponds to two western canons : the canon of proportion, through the use of the extreme and mean ratio; and the canon of harmonious division, through its ability to be folded into seven equal parts. A median fold parallel to the vertical side of the flag divides it in two and defines a point on its upper horizontal edge. From this point, a diagonal fold joins the bottom right corner of the rectangle. Its intersection with the main diagonal, opposed to the entire flag, in relation to the upper horizontal edge, determines one third of the length of the flag by a new fold, again parallel. From this point a new diagonal is drawn towards the corner, and its intersection with the main diagonal determines, by the same principle, the quarter of the flag. Three successive folds give the fifth, sixth and finally seventh divisions of the length of the flag. The measurement given by this fold is carried over the entire surface to divide it into seven areas, length-wise and height-wise.
Seven people are needed to perform the unfolding choreography. ⚀ JW
The flag, removed from its pole in Leuven, becomes a tablecloth in Resia. ⚀ LP
The flag never touches the ground while being unfolded and is directly hoisted onto the pole. ⚀ JW
The pattern created by the folds is useful for positioning each person during the choreography.
The folding marks the medium, these traces are translated into a pattern of perforated dots of varying sizes.
⚀ JW
⚀ JW
⚀ LP
seven
communities
Published on Apr 8, 2024
Modified 3 months ago
Akerbeltz
An ambivalent hybrid figure, half-man half-animal, Akerbeltz (literally, ‘black goat’) is a traditional figure in Basque mythology, belonging to the lineage of cults dedicated to Pan and originating from ancient Egypt. Akerbeltz is part of a family of giants along with Mari, Urtzi and Sorgin, as well as the four Galtzagorris: Oker, Alper, Txoro and Txokolo.
Akerbeltz’s aluminum structure was sawed into two parts to allow for transportation by van by its community from the Basque Country to the Italian Alps, then to Venezia. ⚀ LP
Pronouns
he·him
Year of birth
2003
Home
Basque Country (ES)
Responsible entity
Mutrikuko Erraldoi eta Buruhandien konpartsa
Community
Citizens of Mutriku
Height
355 cm
Circumference
67,5 × 80 cm
Weight
25 kg
Materials
Aluminium trestle, resin (head) and fabric (clothing)
Mounting time / level of difficulty
15 minutes / very simple
Makers
Xiriako Andonegi
Clothing
Xiriako Andonegi
Place of manufacture
Basque Country (ES)
Annual calendar
21 and 23 July, 15 and 16 September and the race on 19 March
Announcement of departure
Kalaputxi 03/2024
Departure for Venezia party
24/02/24
Initiator
Tristan Sadones
The journey and successive outings during the various stages of the trip have left marks on Babette’s back.⚀ LP
Babette
Babette is inspired by a real person, Babeth Mouton, who died during the Covid pandemic and was well-liked in her neighbourhood. She was a textile worker and a member of Jeunesse Ouvrière, fighting for working women’s rights.
Pronouns
she·her
Year of birth
2021
Home
Tourcoing (FR)
Responsible entity
MJC La Fabrique, Tourcoing
Community
MJC users, volunteers, residents
Height
330 cm
Circumference
119 cm
Weight
45 kg
Materials
Wicker (frame) and fibreglass (bust, head and arms), fabrics (clothing)
Mounting time / level of difficulty
40 minutes / simple
Makers
Pierre Loyer with assistance from the MJC workshops
Clothing
MJC sewing workshop
Place of manufacture
District Brun-Pain, Tourcoing (FR)
Annual calendar
Neighbourhood festivals in March, May and July
Announcement of departure
La Fabrique à News 05/2024
Departure for Venezia party
16/03/24
Initiator
Tristan Sadones
Dame Nuje Patat
Dame Nuje Patat is a plant giant whose head is a potato crowned with a basket. She is connected to the agricultural market held in the summer in Baaigem, a potato production region.
The preparation and assembly of Dame Nuje Patat are extremely delicate. ⚀ LP
The announcement of Dame Nuje Patat’s departure to Venezia is published in Amok, the local newspaper of Gavere.
Pronouns
she·her
Year of birth
1978, rebirth 2016
Home
Baaigem (BE)
Responsible entity
De Lustige Tonussen and the municipality of Gavere
Community
De Lustige Tonussen
Height
421 cm
Circumference
135 cm
Weight
45 kg
Materials
Wicker (frame), polystyrene, resin, wood (head) and fabric (arms, hands and clothing)
Mounting time / level of difficulty
1 hour / delicate
Makers
Anonymous person (frame), Rosine Vankwikelberge (design head), Kevin Leybaert (making head + hands)
Clothing
Karen Meskens, Anne Schumacher
Place of manufacture
Baaigem (BE)
Annual calendar
ATTIC Sfeermarkt Baaigem (locale market with local and regional products)
Announcement of departure
Amok 12/2023
Departure for Venezia party
28/01/24
Initiator
Sophie Boiron
Edgar l’Motard, without his skirted pants, upon his arrival at the Belgian pavilion. ⚀ LP
Edgar l’Motard
Edgar l’Motard is a giant inspired by a former smuggler operating on the French-Belgium border who hid tobacco in the false bottom of his motorcycle fuel tank.
Pronouns
he·him
Year of birth
2007
Home
Steenvoorde (FR)
Responsible entity
Motoclub Steenvoorde
Community
Motoclub Steenvoorde
Height
400 cm
Circumference
68 × 68 cm
Weight
42 kg
Materials
Wooden trestle, resin (bust, head and arms) and fabric (clothing)
Mounting time / level of difficulty
45 minutes / simple
Makers
Ramon Aumedes / Taller de gegants - nans i figures de grans dimensions
Clothing
Ramon Aumedes / Taller de gegants - nans i figures de grans dimensions
Place of manufacture
Granollers (ES)
Annual calendar
Last Sunday in April at the Steenvoorde Summer Carnival
Announcement of departure
La Voix du Nord (Hazebrouck) 04/02/24
Departure for Venezia party
n.a.
Initiator
Marilyne Grimmer
⚀ TS
Érasme
Érasme is modelled on the Renaissance humanist and travelling teacher who lived for a few months in Anderlecht. The dissemination of his texts coincided with the development of printing. It was while crossing the Alps on the way to London that he wrote The Praise of Folly.
The announcement of Erasme’s departure to Venezia is published in Anderlecht Contact, the community newsletter.
Erasme’s hands are as fragile and precious as his face and are transported in a custom-made crate. ⚀ LP
Pronouns
he·him
Year of birth
1995
Home
Anderlecht (BE)
Responsible entity
ASBL 'Procession de Saint-Guidon'
Community
ASBL 'Procession de Saint-Guidon' and Bruxsels folklore lovers
Height
320 cm
Circumference
107 cm
Weight
50 kg
Materials
Aluminium (frame and body), resin (head and hands) and fabric (clothing)
Mounting time / level of difficulty
2 hours / very delicate
Makers
Jean Vandertrappen, head and hands restored by Jakline
Clothing
Restored by Françoise Gente
Place of manufacture
Anderlecht (BE)
Annual calendar
Procession of Saint-Guidon (September) and various Bruxsels folk festivals
Announcement of departure
Anderlecht Contact 01/2024
Departure for Venezia party
17/02/24
Initiator
Tristan Sadones
Julia is being carried by her community and the collective onto the ice of Lake Resia. ⚀ LP
Julia
Julia is a worker with an immigrant background, with mixed racial origins like many residents of Charleroi. To mark the city’s 350th anniversary, citizens came together to create a new giant, opting specifically for a female figure, given the absence of such a figure among the existing giants. Her first public showing coincided with the demonstrations against the closure of the Caterpillar factories in Gosselies.
Pronouns
she·her
Year of birth
2016
Home
Charleroi (BE)
Responsible entity
Eden Charleroi
Community
Eden users
Height
384 cm
Circumference
120 cm
Weight
50 kg
Materials
Metal (frame), foam (basket), epoxy resin (bust, head and arms) and fabric (clothing)
Mounting time / level of difficulty
30 minutes / simple
Makers
Sébastien Bracq
Clothing
Ornella Marotta with the assistance of Laurence Vits, Peggy Francart (make-up)
Place of manufacture
Eden, Charleroi (BE)
Annual calendar
Walloon festival, Carnival, Escort of Alzon’s Finger
Announcement of departure
Vlan édition B1 Charleroi NORD 17/01/24
Departure for Venezia party
Brûlage du Corbeau, Charleroi 02/03/24
Initiator
Tristan Sadones
Mettekoe in Padova.
Mettekoe
Mettekoe was born as an extension of the Equinox Festival, conceived by Xavier Parpentier, which assigned the attributes, among other things, of a colour and an animal to each neighbourhood of the city after it was divided into seven districtst. It represents a Bornean orangutan. The association Les Amis de Mettekoe raises funds to support this endangered species.
The announcement of Mettekoe’s departure to Venezia is published in Enghien News, the municipality’s newsletter.
The size and weight of Mettekoe imply significant transportation and assembly logistics. For example, it is necessary to assemble scaffolding to hoist and secure its head. ⚀ LP
Pronoun
they
Year of birth
2022
Home
Petit-Enghien (BE)
Responsible entity
Les Amis de Mettekoe (Joseph Bernard, Olivier Gilkain)
Community
Les Amis de Mettekoe
Height
490 cm
Circumference
169 cm
Weight
200 kg
Materials
Wood (frame), resin (head), artificial fur (body), velvet (hands) and LED (eyes)
Mounting time / level of difficulty
1 hour / agility required with climbing inside
Makers
Joseph Bernard, Olivier Gilkain
Clothing
Paulette Baillez
Place of manufacture
Petit-Enghien (BE)
Annual calendar
Equinox Festival (it is a young giant, so the calendar is still being defined)
Announcement of departure
Enghien News 12/2023
Departure for Venezia party
02/03/24
Initiator
Sophie Boiron
Julia is featured on a 5 Carol’Or bill.
⚀ Christoph Van Damme
⚀ LP
terroirs, rhizomes and utopias
eli lebailly and Maximilien Atangana
Published on Mar 21, 2024
Modified 5 months ago
Peissant Carnival, burning of the Gille, 2024. ⚀ eli lebailly
eli
The tensions between elite culture, popular culture, mass culture and folklore bring about questions in terms of their links with politics. If ecological and social issues seem to be a shared experience, opinions differ concerning the relationships among these types of culture. We decided to collaborate on this essay, each having had an idea to develop in separate texts; in this way, we bring our readers into the kitchen, this privileged space for discussions, where food is prepared...
Maximilien
According to cultural studies theorist Raymond Williams, ᓓ1 culture is first and foremost a set of representations, discoveries and dedicated artistic creations. It is also a model of thinking and behaving assumed by a social group, linked to principles of action and evaluation, which take concrete form in the knowledge that models a social order. Cultures are born from history and from encounters that regenerate, transform or perpetuate them, and they develop against the background of unequal social relations, which determine their elite or popular status.
Elite Culture, Popular Culture, Mass Culture and Folklore
Elite culture is upheld by the dominant social group to convey its ideology. Its ascendancy in the social, media, political, theoretical and artistic fields ensures a hegemony that hinders the development of popular culture. ᓓ2 The latter emerges from the social experience of subordinate groups and develops its diverse creativity in so-called outlaw micro-practices of active consumption (reinterpretation, recycling, DIY, anonymity, etc.), taking advantage each time of the particular environment. Here, cultural resistance is conceived as a ruse originating from the interaction of subordinate persons who refuse to be dominated. ᓓ3 These are ways of dealing with what the elites impose on them or refuse them. ᓓ4 Mass culture is distinguished from popular culture by its industrial modes of production and its distribution favoured by the mass media, ᓓ5 designed for the consumption by the population whose preferences it guides. At times it draws on popular culture to subjugate subordinates and serve capitalism against critics. However, the popular masses, who can differentiate between the serious matters and the entertainment distributed through mass culture, reserve it a selective welcome in accordance with their own cultural logics. ᓓ6 Established as a discipline at the beginning of the nineteenth century, folklore is a set of habits and customs that have been developed and transmitted orally, from an ancient culture of unknown origin. ᓓ7 It exists between nostalgic celebration, ethnographic investigation and archiving, and is viewed as a reconstitution of historical evidence and a fight against annihilation. But the scholarly pursuits to which folklore gives rise are not without the risk of suspending it in a reactionary conservatism, which denies that a tradition has been built and evolves.
Cultures, Migrations and Popular Education
The tensions between these cultures and migration places us in a period of globalisation, linked to the development of capitalism and European colonialism since the sixteenth century. This globalisation has brought about movements by and contacts between peoples and populations against a backdrop of economic exploitation and stigmatisation. The racialised migrants who settled in the countries of former colonial powers massively integrated and acculturated themselves into working-class environments, often in unequal terms based on coloniality. Against the denial of their recognition, the subalterns rose up, divided by the contradictions between racialised and indigenous minorities. These contradictions come to the fore during the Ducasse d’Ath, and when folkloric figures such as the controversial Savage emerge. ᓓ8
I, Maximilien, am writing from La Louvière, in the Belgian province of Hainaut. Of African descent, I’m a popular education facilitator for Hainaut culture. Popular education is a quest for justice dedicated to disadvantaged populations. As a process of political subjectification, popular education links injustice to inequitable access to common resources. It raises awareness and, through experiential learning that empowers, it develops in participants the ability to work collectively to transform reality, by promoting popular culture and the cultural contribution of minorities, as well as the counter-hegemonic use of elite culture.
It is from this position that the Petticoat Government collective attracts me. Its reality-transforming project, too, enhances the popular imagination ᓓ9 through the resuscitation of the folkloric figures of processional giants. In the North of France, the culture of giants seems to have appeared at the end of the sixteenth century to enhance processions organised jointly by the municipal authorities and the clergy to attract divine favour to the city and to defend its independence wrested from the local lords. ᓓ10 As a wicker effigy wrapped in canvas, the giant exalted the power and art of basket weavers while expressing a particular city’s identity and culture. Since its appearance, the giant has traversed history as the coat of arms of successive political orders, carried by actors gradually marginalised and reduced to silence by modernity.
Art and Utopia
The transformation of reality therefore requires that these beings who are invisible or looked down on make themselves visible by establishing themselves as actors benefitting from a reversal of political power. Examining the links between art and politics, artist Hito Steyerl sees contemporary art as a tool for the emergence of a post-democratic world wherein the emancipatory potential of art has been neutralised. Art will turn into an enterprise, the sustainability of which relies on extensive free labour and the intensive exploitation of employees with almost no rights. ᓓ11 Contemporary art is part of elite culture, and the Petticoat Government project comes from this field. How then can we mobilise the tenets of popular culture considering this relationship, overshadowed by the risks of fetishisation, cultural appropriation and monopolisation, and without reducing subordinate actors to silence?
⚀ el
eli
Having read through Poétique de la Relation by Martinique philosopher Édouard Glissant, ᓓ12 I relay here echoes of my personal true but false experience, as a (cunning?) dialectic and a story in motion, in movement.
I left Hainaut at age 17 to study anthropology in Liège. I settled in Bruxsels, then in Marseille and in Drogenbos. I’m an artist and a project manager. I grew up with an awareness of order and disorder. Like La Louvière where you, Maximilien, live, Peissant, where I grew up, is near Binche. I lived there and performed in the carnival until I was 17. We waited expectantly for it! The drums punctuated the still dark morning; the bells and the clogs awakened the earth. Girls and ladies, as Pierrot, a cowboy or a fairy, preceded the Gilles – ‘good comrades, good fathers’ – in their costumes decorated with stars and small patriotic black, yellow and red lions, cosmogonic elements linked to the earth, the awakening of spring and abundance. Greeting the crowds, drinking (on the side) their beers, the Gilles revolved around themselves, like the planets. The women joined hands and advanced in tight lines. The folklore had been modified: the procession of the bonnes vivantes was added to the Gilles. Does adhering to tradition reflect the position of the people? How do young participants disrupt the narrative...?
A people in exile? The differences decrease between the provincial and the elite from the capital. The one settles in with the other. With the partial possibility of people being able to climb the socio-economic ladder, popular culture, as well as the history of the railways and bridges forged by our engineers, has a place in the hearts of both the local café and the environs of the well off. The folklores that have survived are supported by those who have climbed the ladder. In Bruxsels, some follow the latest news from contemporary art galleries while living in working-class neighbourhoods; some gentrify, but some are on low incomes and cannot settle elsewhere. Areas undergoing socio-economic change are at odds with the popular culture–elite culture parallelism. Relationships are developing in many directions. As if calling for creolisation, and underlining the effect of the ‘freezing’ of cultures, Glissant writes:
Through world-echoes, balance and sustainability are revived.[...]Sustainability is emerging: this is what is taking the place of the old classicisms, accomplished no longer by deepening a particular tradition but by the willingness of all traditions to enter into relationships. ᓓ13
I work within the cross-section of ecology, cultural institutions and working-class neighbourhoods. Often, failing to open the door from the project inception and set-up phase, and rather than offering the role of curator or partner, the elite invite themselves into working-class lands. Why must we first understand the other in order to show solidarity? Who benefits from popular culture? At the end of the twentieth century, conscious of socio-economic and power games, communities based on gender, minority and other named specificities, suspicious of language, began to self-represent, transforming the space of cultural demands and bringing in new languages. This is what is happening with hip-hop dance, which is opening up to classical dance, in the language of the street. These numerous movements are internal and influence order and politics. As an urban dancer sees it,
I have the impression that it is a place of power and resistance.[...]I remain convinced that we are passing guests. [...]There someone has blocked the lift door with their foot. I just want to see if they let us into the lift. ᓓ14
Each particular culture is animated by the knowledge of its particularity, but this knowledge has no borders, ᓓ15
Glissant said. What will be the impact of postcolonial theories, of demystifying patriarchy, of biopower, of practices that reinvest or repair, of emotions, of the living? The intention of culture is one thing; its creative dynamics are another. We make it and it makes us. Who is this we? For Glissant, unlike root identity, which deepens and can grow towards a uniformity of the true, identity-in-relationship or identity-rhizome is a resource, a capacity of variation, linked to the experience of conscious or unconscious contacts between cultures and to the idea of fluidity. Referring to the language of the Antilles, a mixture of French and the languages of enslaved people, Glissant notes a process of cross-breeding, which he calls creolisation. Within the relationship, an indescribable movement of the world and cultures, shifting from identity-as-roots to identity-as-relationship allows us to envisage our relationships differently and to displace the opacities and transparencies attached to them.
We therefore call opacity that which protects the Diverse. And from now on we call transparency the imagination of Relationship [...], ᓓ16
[...] [E]very generalization gives birth to its illusions [and] if folklore debilitates, it en-rhizomes with equal force. ᓓ17
Two people writing together is a bit like a dance, a delicate, precise balance. In its relational process, the Petticoat Government travelling project brings us back to the bodies it impacts and by which it is impacted – namely, the lands, the water, the air and the many beings without whom we would not be.
By inviting new giants and/or traditional popular cultures or communities to connect through folklore (pursued, imagined, mutating) and contemporary art (questioned, enchanted, diverted), Petticoat Government takes the people and landscapes it has encountered to Italy. It invites us to have a closer look at these giants towering over the elitist space they inhabit. In this reversal of perspective, raising our heads, will we find ourselves under a (r)evolving galaxy in search of a feeling of interstellar connection?
⚀ el
Annie Gérin, ‘L’Art dans la culture: trois études de cas’, Pratiques de l’histoire de l’art à l’UQAM, 2nd ed., Fall 2014, pp. 59–64.
See Paul Ariès, Écologie et cultures populaires: Les modes de vie populaires au secours de la planète (Lyon: Les éditions Utopia), 2015.
See Ariès2015.
See Denys Cuche, La Notion de culture dans les sciences sociales (Paris: La Découverte), 2016.
See Éric Macé, ‘Mass culture is not popular culture, but has good (sociological) reasons to be popular’, VEI enjeux 133, 2003, DOI, (accessed 13 January 2024).
See Cuche 2003.
See Lampros Flitouris and Christos Dermentzopoulos, ‘Le Pas suspendu de la modernité: Le passage de la culture populaire à une culture de masse dans l’Europe de Sud-Est’, Belphégor 18-1, 2020, DOI, (accessed 12 December 2023).
Taken from colonial imagery, the so-called Ath savage is represented by a white man painted black, with rings in his nose and ears. Chained in the procession, he publicly breaks free to symbolise, according to Belgian colonial propaganda, a black man ‘liberated’ from Arab slave traders by the white Belgian coloniser on a civilising mission. The controversy aroused by this racist representation of the Black man, strongly condemned by anti-racist activists, led to the removal of the Ducasse d’Ath from the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, lesoir.be, (accessed 19 February 2024).
See Sylvain Lesage, ‘L’Effigie et la mémoire’, Tracés: Revue de Sciences humaines 5, 2004, DOI, (accessed 23 December 2023).
See Hito Steyerl, ‘Politique de l’art: art contemporain et transition vers la postdémocratie’, Critique d’art, 40, 2012, DOI, (accessed 15 March 2020).
See Édouard Glissant, Poétique de la Relation (Paris: Gallimard), 1990.
Ibid., p. 109.
This urban dancer appeared in Philippe Béziat’s film Gallant Indies (2020) on the eponymous opera choreographed by Bintou Dembélé and produced by Clément Cogitore.
Édouard Glissant, op.cit., p. 183.
Ibid., p. 75.
Ibid., p. 215.
Biographies
eli lebailly is a multidisciplinary artist and cultural project managertrained in the anthropology of communication, a student of shiatsu since 2019 and an adept of wandering thought. As a photographer, workshop facilitator, bodies and voices listener and walker, she weaves a web of human and non-human stories between the vast scale of landscapes and ever-smaller ones. Her work revolves around notions of place and relationships within a complex system.
Maximilien Atangana holds a master’s degree in economic and social policy from UCLouvain. A continuing education facilitator at Hainaut Culture and a trainer in Black African arts and literature, he is also the organiser of the AfricaLouv’ intercultural festival, which promotes contemporary Afro-descendant creations in La Louvière. A poet, storyteller and percussionist under the pseudonym Jah Mae Kân, he has published three works of poetry, but interactive public performance, combining recitation, music and dance, is his preferred mode of expression.
⚀ el
chapter
lago di Resia
Published on Apr 8, 2024
Modified 3 months ago
⚀ LP
At midday on 9 March 2024, the giants and partner communities of the collective behind Petticoat Government, on their way to Venezia, stop off at the Resia Alpine pass, close to Austria and the Swiss canton of Graubünden. On the shores of a frozen lake covering a submerged village, the event, takes on the form of a gigantic picnic. This is the Alpine chapter of the long-term collaborative scenario to which everyone is invited.
The giants are transported to Resia in a semi-trailer truck. They are followed by two buses packed with community members, musicians, friends, and accomplices of the collective.
Friday, 8 March
Meeting point: 7 :00 a.m. at the rear of the Gare du Midi in Bruxsels at 85 Rue de France, (1060 Saint Gilles)
Bus company: Voyages Léonard (with toilets)
During the trip
Catering planned for everyone : breakfast, sandwich, snack and cold dish, a collaboration with APUS & Les Cocottes Volantes
Film programme (selection by Stéphane Olivier)
Les nains aussi ont commencé petits (Even Dwarfs Started Small, 1970), Werner Herzog
Casanova de Fellini (1976), Federico Fellini
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989), Joe Johnston
La planète sauvage (Fantastic Planet, 1973), René Laloux
Attack of the 50 Foot Cheerleader (2012), Kevin O’Neill
The Colossus of Rhodes (1961), Sergio Leone
Les gloutonnes (The Gobblers, 1973), Jess Franco
The Pied Piper (1972), Jacques Demy
Les voyages de Gulliver (Gulliver’s Travels, 1939), Dave Fleischer
Arrival at Resia: 9 :00 p.m.
Accommodation group A = bus WITH trunk (the trunk can be used for the instruments, if necessary)
Accommodation in Vnà and Ramosch (CH)
Breakfast served for everyone at Pension Arina in Vnà
Journey Ramosch⌣Vnà by bus (10 minutes)
Accommodation group B = bus WITHOUT trunk
Accommodation in Malles at FinKa Hostel
Breakfast on-site
Next to the frozen lake, the giants are unpacked from their transport crates.⚀ LP
⚀ LP
Saturday, 9 March
Plan B will be released a few days before in the event of bad weather.
Journey to the Lake
Switzerland⌣Curon Campanile
One departure from Vnà at 8:00 a.m.: pg + technical team + giants’ managers
A second and final departure from Vnà at 10:45 a.m.: musicians
Trunks⌣Curon Campanile
One departure from FinKa at 8:30 a.m.: Ivo + Eva leave with Dominique, Sophie’s dad
Second departure from FinKa at 9:00 a.m.: giant bearers + Young Curators Storytellers
Departure from Vnà at 10:45 a.m.: giants (extra people) + press + everyone else
Picnic
On the frozen lake, at the foot of the campanile
Address: RG6P+7J Curon Venosta, Sud-Tyrol (IT)
Collaboration with the Resia tourist office
Operations Team
9:30 a.m.: meet the truck with the giants
10:00⌣11:30 a.m.: preparation of giants (car park)
Christoph, Valentin, Simona and Ivo: unload trucks
Eva: take photos of condition of giants on arrival + take photos with the webcam every hour from arrival + write stories
Antoinette: distribute boxes
Simona: accompany musicians from 11:30 a.m.
10:00⌣11:30 a.m.: Pierre and Marine : organise the picnic + position the table with Gerald
11:00 a.m.: Ivo: coordinate assembly of the telescopic flags
Young Curators Storytellers: assemble the flags and supervise the giants
Journey to the Dining Hall
Curon Campanile⌣San Valentino community hall
Address: Via Chiesa 5, San Valentino
Collaboration with Vinterra
4:30 p.m.: open the hall and welcome Vinterra, the first guests
4:30⌣6:00 p.m.: bus journeys
Afternoon snack and hot drinks provided in the hall from 5:00 p.m.
4:30⌣5 :00 p.m.: organise the snack
5:00⌣7 :00 p.m.: organise the dinner
6:15 p.m.: meet with the entire team + guests
7:00⌣8 :30 p.m.: dinner
Vegetarian menu of carrot cream soup with ginger, lentils and vegetable curry with Val Venosta polenta; optional : meat in sauce
9:30 p.m.: groups return to hotels
Return to Hotels
San Valentino hall⌣Switzerland⌣Malles
Departures: 9:00⌣9:30 p.m.
The festive picnic is underway on the frozen lake. ⚀ LP
⚀ PG + LMNO
⚀ PG + LMNO
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PG or
re-enchanting the World
Jean-Baptiste Carobolante
Published on Sep 9, 2024
Modified 1 week ago
A wild man sculpture on the façade of the artisans' house, Thiers, 16th century.
On 9 March 2024, several hundred people gathered on the frozen Lago di Resia in South Tyrol, at the borders of Switzerland, Italy and Austria. This meeting of individuals who, for the most part, had known each other very little or not at all, was organised around a simple, clear premise: to witness a life-changing event, an event in the literal sense of the term – a fundamental happening that would mark both time (a date to become a shared memory) and their lives (a date to take its place in their personal histories). The site itself is a source of fantasy. Lago di Resia was artificially created by the building of a large dam in 1950, uniting several small bodies of water and submerging the mountain village of Graun, except for its old church tower. On that March day, we walked on the thick ice, letting our gaze wander over the snow-capped mountains caught in the mist and noting our insignificance in the presence of the Tyrolean bell tower emerging from the frozen abyss.
The Petticoat Government’s intention was largely to experience the sublime effect offered by such a landscape – a rare and precious feeling. It’s not the exoticism that tourists seek at the far corners of the planet but an attempt to re-enchant the world, being both nowhere, in a space where telecommunication tools are ineffective between multiple borders, and fundamentally ‘present’, in the hyper-actuality of the event, wherein the mystique of the location plays a part. But above all, we say ‘re-enchantment’ because the reason for our being there was not simply to observe the improbable existence of such a place, but rather to watch an ensemble of seven giants dance together. For a few hours, we experimented with games of scale that allowed us to reposition ourselves in the world: a community of human beings drawn together by a sense of sympathy, with the giants, who were, during this time, our personal gods and goddesses, with the bell tower rising out of the darkness above its submerged village and lastly with the mountains opening in us an eternal hope of adventure. These games of scale were enchanting because of the energy of our common humanity, the importance of making memories, the need to gather around monuments and the infinite space surrounding us.
Experiencing such an event, we understood that all this is fundamental for human beings. We cannot live without shared mythologies, without fictions that bind us, without fantasies that open their doors to the Other.
Secular Religion
The Resia event was pagan and secular: dancing to intoxicating, fanfare music, twirling around with banners, unfurling a white flag and using it as a tablecloth, all the while surrounded by seven giants beating the rhythm for a gathering that they dominated by several metres, and not coming too close to the bell tower, lest the ice break under our weight.
The issue with western culture is that it aims to dominate emotions through reason, thereby blinding ourselves to the human and social side of life. But the fact remains that while reason allows societies to be structured and protected, only emotions give birth to what is common and shared. These emotions, which gave rise to the Resia event, are historical, although shadowed by a modernity desiring reason. What reason has taken away from you and us, that which is invoked in festive evenings and collective euphoria but also in demonstrations, is precisely the mythical emotion of a group. It is this that allows you and us to exist as individuals, as a body and as a social class aware of its history. If the necessary precautions are taken because of the threat of such a confiscation, one could affirm that this mythical emotion of the group is what Antonio Gramsci called folklore: ‘Until now, folklore has been studied mainly as a picturesque element [...]. On the contrary, it should be studied as a way of viewing the world, largely implicit, of specific layers of society (in time as in space), in opposition (itself also most often implicit, mechanical, objective) to the “official” world-views (or, in a broader sense, of the cultivated layers of historically determined society) which have succeeded one another in historical development.’ ᓓ1 Folklore should not be understood as folk-lore – that is, the story that one can tell of a people, a story that is necessarily arbitrary, as are all traditions – but as the way the subaltern classes view the world, a Weltanschauung of which nothing remains except oral traditions, trans-generational memories, premodern nostalgia. And hence we have the idea that to form a group, you had to have experienced this type of emotion. This is what the Petticoat Government attempted to revive in Resia: a collective euphoria attained by concrete and mythical games of scale.
This shared mythical emotion is the true religion of the peoples of Europe. It is called Carnival, even if the term no longer translates today as it did for centuries, even millennia. The traditional reading is that it is a popular time of year from January or February to the beginning of Lent, marked by Ash Wednesday, which can fall between 4 February and 10 March. However, this late reading would be imperfect because it is incomplete. In their 1974 reference work Le Carnaval, Claude Gaignebet and Marie-Claude Florentin rather place these festivities within a much more complex set of events governing the entire year following the lunar calendar. For them, Carnival is the result of a religion divided into periods of 40 days, or about one and a half lunar months. The particular event at the end of January, as celebrated today in an altered manner, would thus mark the last new moon of winter, corresponding to Mardi Gras and Candlemas. ᓓ2
The fact that Carnival, as we understand it, occurs at this time of year is important for understanding why we celebrate giants then. The first days of February are when bears come out of hibernation, and therefore it is the birth of spring. But while for us moderns this season begins with the equinox, between 19 and 21 March, the advent of popular spring varies much more. The legends as noted by Gaignebet and Florentin ᓓ3 claim that throughout Europe, on 2 February, the bear comes out of its den to check the weather. If the sky is clear, the beast returns to its shelter, a sign that winter will last 40 more days. If the weather is overcast, it comes out of hibernation for good, marking the end of winter. This is the first Carnival event: the struggle between black and white, between night and day, between death and rebirth, the bear festival, the full moon festival – symbolically devoured in the form of a crepe.
We need here to keep in mind that, in Europe, the bear is considered not only the king of animals but also a half-divine, half-human being. It is the wild man, the incarnation of the soul of a dead man in the body of a beast, thus creating a dual figure. It is the giant, the greater-than-human, open to every kind of emotion and appetite, the devouring ogre. ᓓ4 The Carnival giant probably has its origins here: in the fusion of a human with an animal that surpasses it in size, strength and cosmic power. Because the bear is a psychopomp animal par excellence, on leaving its cave, it brings with it the souls from the afterlife. It eats laxative plants to purge itself and passes wind that medieval individuals understood symbolically as the digestion of souls, of everything that had died during the winter, of everything that can haunt the body, society and reality and of everything from which one needs to protect oneself. This is why, during Carnival, we eat and drink to fill ourselves up so that the souls of the dead do not enter us. We enlarge ourselves to be as big as bears and to give birth to wind in our turn. We make giants in homage to the super-human, the demigod, the savage who is everything that society is not and who nevertheless is the one who governs everything, what is and what was. Carnival is therefore not a simple fair, a drinking binge, but rather, as we have noted, a common and mythical experience of emotions pushed to their paroxysm.
Humanity, or the Acceptance of Alterity
The risk run by such a festivity, the heart of which metaphysically rests on social and bodily excess, was that it would be betrayed by authority figures. Capitalist modernity has gradually transformed folklore, the culture of the subaltern classes, into fakelore – that is, into a reified, harmless folklore, fashioned for tourists and museums. ᓓ5 These are arbitrary traditions that play into the hands of all conservative, nationalist and reactionary thinkers.
Carnival is precisely the subversive power of the common people embodied by the giant. The giant is the titan Atlas capable of carrying the world on its shoulders but doomed to endure this ordeal until the end of time. The giant is melancholy itself, a figure forever paying the price of its divine condition. More precisely, it is a being whose suffering arises from its total and ultimate knowledge, a being therefore from among the stars, from above the contingencies of reality. ᓓ6 But it is also Gargantua, the Rabelaisian giant who devours the world and who oozes from all his openings, symbolising this popular festival of the ‘great meal’ ᓓ7 and whose gas and burps give birth to storms and mountains. ᓓ8
The giant is therefore the demigod that we all create together in order to be able both to structure the invisible world and to make manifest – that is, place within reach – the tangible world. The giant is the very figure of alterity, being of the critical distance from all that exists and embodying the monstrous aspect that resides within all that lives. It is a being at once of stars and viscera. To celebrate it is to accept that nothing is ever pure and perfect, that everything is made of concessions, of alternations of pleasure and anguish, of encounters of contrary elements, of marriages of the improbable. Here lies the power of Carnival: to bear what is unbearable in the Other, to survive what is destructive on Earth, to live alongside the dangers of the invisible world.
The experience at Resia, the beating heart that vitalises the entire Petticoat Government project – the foundation of its collective work and the central argument of its proposal – demonstrated the capacity for resistance and the power of survival that only the common and shared permits. This was already the observation of Starhawk: connecting the spiritual and the political, questioning power-over and power-from-within ‘and using this to transform ourselves, our community and our culture. Using this to resist the destruction to which those in power are dooming the world.’ ᓓ9 This is the issue here also: political revolution is a cultural revolution that is a revolution in our relationship to ourselves and in our relationship to the world. Making giants dance in a sublime landscape is, without a doubt, a first step.
Antonio Gramsci, Letteratura e vita nazionale (Turin: Einaudi), 1954, p. 215, quoted in Carlo Prandi, ‘Religion et classes subalternes en Italie: Trente années de recherches italiennes’, Archives de sciences sociales des religions, no. 43/1 (1977): p. 103.
Claude Gaignebet and Marie-Claude Florentin, Le Carnaval: Essais de mythologie populaire (Paris: Payot), 1974, chap. 1.
Ibid., p. 18.
Claude Gaignebet and Jean-Dominique Lajoux, Art profane et religion populaire au Moyen Âge (Paris: PUF), 1985, p. 83.
Anne-Marie Thiesse, ‘À chacun son folklore’, in Jean-Marie Gallais and Marie-Charlotte Calafat (eds), Folklore (Paris: La Découverte; Metz: Centre Pompidou-Metz; Marseille: Mucem), 2020, p. 89.
Georges Didi-Huberman, Atlas, ou le gai savoir inquiet (Paris: Éditions de Minuit), 2011, p. 84.
Mikhaïl Bakhtine, L’œuvre de François Rabelais et la culture populaire au Moyen Âge et sous la Renaissance (Paris: Gallimard), 1970, p. 339.
Marianne Closson and Myriam White-Le Goff (eds), Les Géants: entre mythe et littérature (Arras: Presses de l’Université d’Artois), 2007, introduction.
Starhawk, Femmes, magie & politique (Paris: Empêcheurs de penser en rond; Le Seuil), 2003, p. 17.
Biography
Jean-Baptiste Carobolante, born in 1988, has a PhD in art history. He works broadly on the theory of the image in the capitalist context, notably by introducing obscure or neglected objects into the history of art to study the outcomes of group imagination processes. His thesis focused on the concepts of ghosts and haunting in contemporary cinema. He has since obtained a grant to conduct a study on commercial painting in the 20th century, in partnership with the Musée International d’Arts Modestes in Sète. He teaches at the École Supérieure d’Art de Dunkerque and the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels de La Cambre, and he is an art critic and the co-director of Mix publishing house.
chapter
Padova
Published on Apr 8, 2024
Modified 3 weeks ago
Akerbeltz dances to the rhythm of the Petti Lion’s printing. ⚀ LP
The giants dance in front of the rotary presses, perhaps to celebrate this cutting-edge technology, which will not see further generations, with the existence of paper-based information now on the verge of extinction. The newspaper of Petticoat Government was printed here. Maximum-format newspapers are known as quotidiano di grande formato (350 mm × 470 mm). The pink paper historically chosen to distinguish it from the general press is used here in reference to the popular Italian newspaper. The gigantic print run of 100,000 copies corresponds to the minimum print for the industry in question and to the maximum economic possibilities of the project.
Under the printing presses, Petticoat Government and community members watch the giants dance. ⚀ LP
l’Petti Lion is printed in 100,000 copies. ⚀ Daniele Povelato
The rotary press is continuously printing using rolls of pink paper. ⚀ DP
Aluminum plates are used for the offset printing of the Petti Lion. ⚀ DP
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The giants visit the printing facilities where l’Petti Lion, the newspaper of the Pavilion is printed. ⚀ LP
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Mettekoe stands in front of the gigantic sectional door of the printing facility. ⚀ LP
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the
great body of the world
Manah Depauw
Published on Apr 8, 2024
Modified 3 weeks ago
Sumerian tablets mention an 11-day period commencing at the beginning of the year, during which time stops. For it to start again, it has to do it in reverse. We then invent rites where bottom takes the place of top and vice versa: the maidservant walks level with her mistress and the man of power is reduced to the rank of commoner. Even the king does not escape the renewal of his destiny. Humiliated, stripped of his insignia, slapped, dragged by the ears and genitals to the statue of the god Marduk, he himself must prostrate, affirming that he has not abused his power. The affront – even if only a pretence – excites Babylon. She has seen her king treated like a slave and revels in the sight. Regenerated by the inversion, she allows her calendar to resume running the right way round.
Moon time, sun time. Macrobius, one of antiquity’s most secretive scholars, once declared: January is like two-faced Janus, seeing the past year and looking at the beginning of the one opening up. Both Dionysus and Pan emerge in this time of beginning and ending. One jumps (syrinx in mouth) in search of a source capable of quenching his insatiable lust, while the other uncovers, fertilises, orgasms and brings to orgasm. Both manifest their presence through cruelty or maternal gentleness, ecstasy or despair. Only in ambivalence do they exist. Existing to be close, immediate, unleashed. No distance from men. They fuse with those of both sexes celebrating them. In the countryside, the crowd opens itself to the same divine trance. No more individuality: all are totally immersed in the pleasure that is procured in the alliance of oneself with others.
A mysterious voice spreads the terrible news above the Aegean Sea: ‘The great Pan is dead!’ The ancient universal god of nature is finished. With nature now dead, we imagine temptation to be finished. Great joy for the new conquerors, who, under the brutality of their united fires, desire something new. Freed during this time from the constraints of habit, they foment the hope that, at this ‘end’ of the world, they will obtain from it things new. General sacking and pillaging. The ALL becomes nothing: ‘The great Pan is dead!’
In the moors, in the deep forests, a handful of hidden tribes sing:
Six little wax children brought to life by the moon. Six plants in the cauldron. Five ages in the duration of time. Five rocks on our heart. Four sharpening stones. Three parts in the world. Three beginnings. Three purposes for man, like for the oak...
Irrigated into these voices are the secrets of trees and flowers, the murmurs of birds, the songs of the hours. Yet these voices recognise their defeat, see it in their spilled blood, in the ever-stronger attacker who repeats: ‘Nature must die. She is entirely reprehensible.’ It will take her a thousand years and a turn of the dial to achieve this.
Victorious Christianity wanted to, and believed it could, kill the enemy. It had done so only partially, forgetting that he was hiding in the calendar. When January arrives without ripping the frost, the enemy crackles with impatience, screams his desire to live a little longer. Tradition – she again – demands it: he only can restart time. Time which must, for a moment, go into reverse. Reverse... just a few letters and here we are in the GREEN year. ᓓ1 The one we thought dead, finished, decapitated, shrivelled is there to resurrect not a bloody god, but a mountain faun, a spirit lodged in stone, a man become a bear. The green year is this time of year when we feed on noise to obtain silence, where we dream of rivers on fire, of sheep chasing wolves, of lands of plenty where food is there for the taking without our having to harvest or prepare it.
Now let’s imagine the Gothic cities and the populace getting excited. The madness, the exaltation, the familiar fear that needs to find its ways to flow away, to distil itself. In the month formerly dedicated to Janus, the people build themselves an island, invent their joy. This territory is Carnival. The one who is fattened and then burned after a judgement, which will reveal his excesses. From fat, we pass to ashes and from these ashes we are reborn again and again. The cycle of life has no end and Carnival suffers no definition. It is un-trappable, cracking words apart to leave only sign language. Rightly or wrongly interpreted, the signs affirm another truth and usher in another system: that of the body that enters into relationship with the world. Carnival engulfs the world. The body of man with the great body of the world. Together, they form the perpetual challenge thrown at the faces of the powerful, the colonists, the leaders and their standards.
We do all these things not seriously, but only for fun and according to the ancient custom; so that the madness that is natural to us, and that seems born with us, is carried away and flows through there, at least once each year. The wine barrels would burst if we did not at times open the tap or the bung to give them air. And we are like old barrels that the wine of life would break if we let them seethe like this through continual devotion... ᓓ2
In the strange indentation in the cycle of the seasons, this enclave-like time, meals are endless, stretching through the day, through the night. Food prepared and shared causes stomachs to swell with flatulence and triggers gestation, giving birth, then breastfeeding. A new family is formed around a pregnant boy. Carnival once again organises inversions. Thanks to it, men reproduce among themselves through food, a magical substance that fills the bellies and gives birth to the Carnival child. A bawling baby who also serves as a tool of protest against the ‘learned’ culture of aristocrats and ecclesiastics.
It doesn’t take much for the Church to meddle here. Carnival is sanctioned; the Feast of Fools is banned. Through our condemnation, we manifest our disgust at the savagery of the populace. As the authorities intensify their repression, the scope of the diabolical widens. The Devil now covers everything that upsets the established order. He’s lodged in the masks. He inhabits the sexual organs. They paint him green to remind us that it is nature in its entirety that inhabits him. He’s sometimes called Satan so as not to call him Saturn. The mischievous Daimon who inspired Socrates becomes Demon. He’s lurking in every corner, in every fold, in every mind; he must be dislodged! The flames have emerged from their hell and with them, the agitators are burned with obsessive enthusiasm. There must be guilty ones. The trouble-maker turns into a tempter, the seditious man into an alchemist, the woman into a witch. And here the abominable mantra begins again: ‘Nature must die. She is entirely reprehensible.’ The repression is massive, bloody, the expression of a class struggle where the powerful appear to not shy away from any cynicism to legitimise their crimes. By chasing the Devil, those in power incarnate him.
He now takes on a hundred hideous forms: running slimy like a snake on breasts, dancing like a toad on bellies. Abdomens that are no longer there to eat, but to vomit armies of bodies. A starving battalion digging fuel in the earth to heat and feed the manor houses. But that’s not enough! The Devil always needs more. With a sharp beak, he plucks horrible kisses from frightened mouths. Cruel time when even the pure, innocent virgin is damned by the pleasure the Spirit inflicts on her. Dark skies for the holidays where everything was common: food, soul and body. From now on, there is no remedy to deliver the madness that inhabits us, the madness specific to us. We exalt in mystical visions; we escape alone into morbid possession.
The witches’ pyres have produced their piles of ashes. And ashes – everyone knows – serve as fertiliser. Scorched earth can become particularly fruitful. And here it becomes rich, abundant, generous once again. The good news is spreading: the cycle of life has no end. The hamlets are jubilant. The girls run across the moor, foreheads wreathed with Saint John’s herbs. We make fires that light and warm. A piece of fabric, a little moss, an animal skin: a mask with which we revisit the joyful marriage of man with nature. Great miracle! In the night, where the vigilance of those in power has relaxed, Carnival is once more born into the world.
Let’s enjoy this last dream moment. In remote corners, in the remnants of forest, we continue to invent the history of the body and the world. The spirits, the little gods have mutated into saints. We live with that. There are places preserved from offence, places where a girl runs across the moor, her forehead wreathed with Saint John’s herbs. Where fires give light and warmth and where possession is no longer a simulacrum smelling of sulphur, but entirely the expression of a necessary savagery. The great Pan is dead. Long live Carnival!
In French, we find word play between l’envers (reverse) and l’an vert (green year), which are pronounced the same. Green, in medieval tradition, is the colour of hidden things. This is why the pagan bestiary often takes on this colour, as for dragons, bandits, fairies and the Devil.
In French, we find word play between l’envers (reverse) and l’an vert (green year), which are pronounced the same. Green, in medieval tradition, is the colour of hidden things. This is why the pagan bestiary often takes on this colour, as for dragons, bandits, fairies and the Devil.
Biography
Manah Depauw, born in1979, is a director, performer and author from Bruxsels. Since the beginning of the 2000s, her plays have invaded the stages of international contemporary theatre. In parallel with her theatrical creations, Depauw undertakes sound experiments (Bruzz Radio / Klara radio station / the label Stroom). She plays in different films and writes plays and articles, which are published in magazines like Etcetera, Alternative théâtrale, Stempel and Ishtar from the Fondation Thalie, among others.
Oma Toops by Jaap Scheeren, Carnac. ⚀ Unknown
chapter
Venezia
Published on Apr 8, 2024
Modified 3 weeks ago
This photo shows the crossing of the lagoon with the giants dismantled in transport crates under a sunny sky with a light breeze, just before arriving at the Giardini of Venezia. On the left, a shuttle boat carries the film crew. In the background, backlit, is the island of Giudecca. Only Akerbeltz is authorised to be raised, being the most manipulable of the ℘ℊ giants, making it suitable for passing under bridges.
The Pavilion, the industrial platform
The ℘ℊ ’s giant, the large industrial skeleton made of galvanised steel profiles machined in ✙ ✚ + ⋕ by folding and shaping metal sheets assembled by rivets and bolts, unfolds in the central room, 1150 cm long, 575 cm wide and 85 cm high. On it are placed the giants made of wicker, steel, aluminium, fabric and resin. Below, you are invited to witness with us their silent presence, to move, to scrutinise. We make ourselves small, our eyes fixed upwards. The stage is foundation, platform, volume, support and technical grid.
Irony ? -50 × 35 bag weighing 25 kg - 40 bags or 1000 kg of sand + 2 Italians or 1150 kg - surface area of 85 × 85 cm or 0.72 m2 1150 kg / 0.72 m2 = 1600 kg/m2.
This form brings tension into the room to vertically connect the earth, space, objects and the sky. It is 169 linear metres of 50 millimetres profile and 294 linear metres of 100 millimetres profile, 1400 kilograms own weight, 600 kilograms permanent load, 1400 kilograms overload and100 kilograms temporary maintenance load supported by three columns. These are in turn supported by concrete bases that compensate the traction and distribute a compression load of less than 1.5 kg/cm² onto the slab and the ground supporting it, probably consolidated by wooden piles. This structure plays with the capacity limits of its production system. Ultralight and dismantlable, it optimises its consumption of materials, permitting another form and use at a later date.
The three single columns required an investigation to verify the assumed permissible load of the building.
In the absence of geotechnical test results and any other information relating to the bearing capacity of the soil in the Belgian Pavilion and/or nearby, it was concluded that no one had the information with which to accurately assess the bearing capacity of the ground (the earth in place). It is also unknown whether the soil beneath the paving was compacted during the construction of the Pavilion more than 100 years ago.
Our investigation into the bearing capacity of a building, which has hosted exhibitions for more than 100 years and was heavily renovated in 1995, has finally produced a result.
Thank you very much for the photos of the 1996 renovation site, which you kindly shared with us. […] The studies and investigations carried out underline your commitment and reassure us. Therefore, we will not oppose the implementation of your project.
Cheeky ones. Grab the vertical pole, that is freed from the steel and the framework. Dancing with the pole is, for pole dancers, more than body training. It is an embodied and brazen means of expression. Learning to break down the movement, understand its mechanics, try it out, adapt it to your body shape and abilities. ᓓ1 A Butterfly, a Superman, a Jade Split with drop and full-bodied exit, so many possible movements, inversions of perspective. The pole physically trains the body for activities as demanding as those required by the bearers parading the giants, before and after their appearance at the Pavilion.
The installation is completed by a bench running around the periphery of the central room, a horizon that proposes a different ergonomics and a slower speed while visiting.
The stage outlines a space ‘below’ that gives way to oral expression, where it is possible to ‘become one’. Led by the sound into dance, we connect with others in movement.
Marie Potvain, «Poles alternatifs: Faire de la pole dance un sport sans effacer son identité; une institutionnalisation en tension», ¿Interrogations? Revue pluridisciplinaire de sciences humaines et sociales, 2022.
Underneath the platform, the bodies overturning. ⚀ PG + LMNO
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Light
The suspended fabric ceiling of certain rooms has been dismantled to reveal part of the Pavilion’s structural system. By making the location’s architecture tangible, the display nuances the existing museum space, designed for abstract neutrality. It points up to the sky, tending towards a celestial vanishing point. Natural light fills the giants’ forms and escapes through their open spaces.
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Music
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Senjan Jansen, Untitled, 2024, 9 tracks, 11:46, loop, based on a composition for percussion by Moha Ezzatvar.
By giving rhythm to the space surrounding [the giants], the music invites the dancing body to regain power. ᓓ1
The sound in the Pavilion is inspired by 20 Hz, a song by Capricorn, which in the nineties became a classic of a subgenre of house, in the rhythm of percussion, in a 4/4 and polyrhythmic alternation. Senjan Jansen’s composition, which revisits the bass line essential to New Beat and other electronic genres, punctuates the space. The percussion rolls of Salamba, the group that accompanied the festive picnic in the Alps, intersperse the loop by recalling the atmosphere of the street parades. Between the giants and the metal stage, the soundtrack produces temporary effects on the visitors’ bodies through variations over time. Sound becomes a link between people and space, an invitation to movement without any purpose other than that of letting go, of pleasure, of meeting oneself and the other through the activation of the senses. The image loop (15 minutes) on the LED screen in the adjacent room allows you to see fragments of the scenario.
See Silvia Federici, Par-delà les frontières du corps (Quimperlé: Éditions Divergences), 2020.
The Young Curators Storytellers
The Youngs Curators Storytellers, flag bearers in Resia, become spokespersons in the Belgian pavilion. ⚀ LP
℘ℊ has been formed in a knowledge co-production mode. The Young Curators Storytellers from Belgian and French art schools – who welcome you and us – gleaned and wrote stories prior to arriving in Venezia. Their personal approaches to the gigantic, to ‘folklore’ and to ℘ℊ have brought everyone to-gether in developing the scenario. They facilitate a dialogue, one not in reaction to a finished object, with which to offer a moment of conviviality through oral expression, and they find a common lan-guage with their interlocutors.
The copyshop
In the Pavilion’s copy shop, the publication is printed on-demand from the website. This printing practice aims to avoid un-necessary over-production and to give a physical dimension to the performative edition. The catalog is packaged in a copy of the Pavillon newspaper, L'Petti Lion.
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The cake, the bean
From April 20 to November 24, every week, the same day at the same hour in the same café, a cake, aPan del Doge containing a Murano bean in the form of a very small giant on the table to be shared.
