Laetitia Douanne

The history of barbed wire, whose use dates back to the first settlers of the Wild West, always driven by their reckless and ruthless spirit of conquest and selfish ambition to leave their mark on wild lands; of its relationship with politics and mercantilism; of the perversion of the millenary relationship between men and animals; of the evolution of surveillance techniques. Fences and borders: the tragic tale of the enclosure of the world.

Out Skerries is a minuscule archipelago of the United Kingdom located in Scotland, to the east of the Shetland Islands, in the middle of the North Sea. A few years ago, the fish farm—the island’s main economic resource and the only company offering the possibility of a job—went bankrupt. Then the government closed the secondary school. The archipelago’s population went from 70 to about 20 inhabitants… Julie Powis Arthur is one of the women who remained. Her husband, then her eldest son, had to leave their house for the Mainland and only rarely come back.

Les EnChantières, an association of women sharing building skills, set about building their own workshop in Montreuil. Initially utopian, this large-scale participatory construction site, open to all, quickly turned into a great emancipatory adventure, nourished by revolts and dreams.