ln an unprecedented collaboration, the artists Luise Schröder and Chedly Atallah interweave their practices around personal and collective memories through the prism of stone. Stones are considered symbols of longevity, hardness and solidity, but here it is the erosion of stories, a witness to the past and raw material for a multitude of different futures. The artists observe the stones as metaphors of stories piling up in a continuous work site. Ranging from occasional phenomena to major upheavals, these memories are destructions, renovations, resistances, gentrifications, extensions of fictional and real territoiries…
Invited to do a research and creation residency at the Ateliers Médicis for the exhbition Regards du Grand Paris, Luise Schröder, artist photographer, in turn invited Chedly Atallah, an artist and architect. The two of them walked the grounds and the underground areas of Clichy-sous-Bois/ Montfermeil, examining the smallest clues to dig into and discover the collective and intimate stories of the many power and territorial struggles – from here, from other places, from afar or from next door, from yesterday and tomorrow, political, love-lorn… A cosmogonic story emerges, involving proof – the artists looking at the stones as a scientist might dissect a body to understand certain things – and involving stories, fabulation or, what we call “narrative speculation.” Facing the violence in the world and the testing of existences or of the truth, the artists invent ‑‑ to fill in, to re‑establish, even to continue exploring new, more equitable relationships. For them it is about rewriting history, so that yesterday’s battles reinforce us, facing those which are remain on the horizon, those we still need to fight.
The photographic installation Pierres sans répit (Relentless stones) can be found on the construction site for the station of the future metro Clichy-Montfermeil (line 16).