Light boxes, permanent work, Lyon, 2009
My First Name Means September is a site-specific work for Lyon 's 8th arrondissement and Vénissieux,
on the outskirts of Greater Lyon. He made contact with the residents. In the
course of his conversations with them he noted certain remarks he overheard.
These texts contradict the impression most often given by the mass media of
stigmatised social groups. What Milin has done is tweak the light-box signs
normally associated with emergency contexts or coldly social organisation –
"police", "caretaker", "security", etc. – with
sentences like In my village the mountain was shaped like a boat or Victor
Hugo's dead... Given an existence in space while enclosed in their boxes, these
words become disturbing and open up new imaginative domains in terms of what
living together is all about.
_______________________________________________
The Correspondence of Gerard Margerite (since 2009, still in the process of being completed)
Gérard Margerite is a
pensioner, an amateur photographer that Delphine and Robert Milin have created.
This character lives in a city centre. He likes to walk and observe the city, as
well as to go on holidays with his granddaughter Lea, to discover different
worlds. This tireless walker is often attracted by shop windows, these
unavoidable elements of our urban landscapes. Displayed powerfully, they try to
create in us the desire to consume.
But the holiday landscape
walks of Gérard Margerite are like many occurrences for his curiosity and his
ceaseless interrogation, in front of what appears.
Sometimes, he feels upset by situations and commercial offers in our common space, which seems alarming to him compared to what he thought he would discover. Then
And he does it addressing those
in charge, telling them his concerns, his inquieries, as well as, sometimes, his
enchantments too.
_____________________________________________Portrait of French Rail Ticket Inspectors (2008)
Video excerpt
Video, chairs, table
Nine French Rail Ticket Inspectors posed for Robert Milin in front of
a camera. They posed separately in two
little spaces specifically created for this purpose by the artist. This
portrait of ticket controllers addressed the issues of identity
looking at each one as a multiplicity. What the identity can reveal from our
inner selves? He decided to imagine a setting : people would pose having
their breakfast.
_____________________________________________________
Pavement sculpture (2006-2007)
_____________________________________________________
Pavement sculpture (2006-2007)
In 2006-2007, on the pavements of
different city centres
I decided to install what I called « visual tools », each having the
shape of a small wooden garden box. They contained soil, plants and two signs
on stakes - intended to show texts and photographs. This sculptural tool played - and continues
to play - the role of something temporarily installeded on certain pavements,
close to the places where lonely people live, as well as other people, wishing
to collaborate.
It is
not conceived as a single but a multiple object, emerging in certain urban
districts, mobilizing the initiative of people who change its looks and take
care of its life.
Each tool can be undertaken by one or more people. They are responsible for keeping it alive for a period of time to be defined on the spot. The collaborating people can choose to plant flowers, aromatics, to water them, to take care of them… So invested, the “tools” constitute their totality, and by the vaster space emanating from them , a wider social sculpture.
Each tool can be undertaken by one or more people. They are responsible for keeping it alive for a period of time to be defined on the spot. The collaborating people can choose to plant flowers, aromatics, to water them, to take care of them… So invested, the “tools” constitute their totality, and by the vaster space emanating from them , a wider social sculpture.
___________________________________________________
Practical and Non Practical Solutions (since 2006, still in the process of being completed)
Video excerpt
Video and watercolors
Robert Milin
has focused his work on portraits, leaving this time aside the
anthropometric approach for a more comprehensive approach of the individual through
a specific situation. The conducting lead is the "solution
pratique" (practical solution), a personal invention which solves a
specific problem occurring in a domestic life situation and
space (relating to spaces such as the kitchen, the bathroom). This problem is not intimate but is particular enough to escape
all existing design proposals. This specific situation relates
directly to people's singularity, to their space and their relationship to
space...for each solution pratique (practical solution), R Milin creates a
video of the person presenting their invention, but also a
watercolour painting in order to penetrate the universe of the person. Each
watercolour painting is followed by a short text inspired from
the person's words.
________________________________________________
Veni, Veni (2005)
Video excerpt
Video, 2005
In 2005, invited as an Artist-in-Residence to the village of Saint Circq Lapopie, I wanted
to continue my work on the rural world, started with Allez, viens donc! / Come on, let’s go !
I wanted to work on the idea of the portrait. It seemed to
me that I could create farmer portraits, being less concerned with the context,
especially in the peasant world marked very much with stereotypes. I also
rejected the idea of a portrait that would be neutral, silent, with a close-up view. I chose to work with
the voice and the language. I was interested in the call, the cry, the
interaction between the cry and space. A cry out in the space is a volume temporarily
filling everything up.
For that purpose, I made some ewe breeders pose in front
of me sitting at 1.50 metre distance from the camera. Above them, there was a
microphone. With these farmers, inhabitants of Quercy, I had had a long meeting
before, in order to explain the project to them and ask them to work with me.
Eventually, in the studio I had improvised, one by one, they came to sit in
front of the camera, like in a photomaton.
Allez viens donc! (2005)
Video excerpt
Video, 2005
Allez, viens
donc! is a visual and sonorous work about farmers world that sketches our rural landscapes. Milin was
meeting farmers for two years all over France in order to discover and
understand the reality of their job. He invited them to take part in his
project through their everyday practice.
Altogether he
met around fifty farmers. He discovered that nowadays a “milking cow” lives 5
or 6 years against 15 years 50 years ago. He wanted to approach what is going
on behind the lovely scenes and green landscapes sold to the tourists. He wanted to reveal the conflicts and issues the rural world faces despite being continually shown as the place of our genesis, as a place of rest.
The work is a
video where sounds and pictures are associated to document one aspect of a complex and multiple reality.
The sonorous
material is made of calls recorded in fields as farmers were calling their herds. Pictures are photographs captured in the place where Milin met peasants. They are
landscapes reflecting a place of work as the cow can see it. He tried to
humanize animals with a framed gaze on the landscape and to animalize men through the
violence of their shoutings.
_________________________________________________
Beware of (licking) dog ! (2003)
Grisolles, Drawings, texts, wooden signs in public area, inhabitants’ actions.
At the initiative of the curator of the Museum of Art and Folk Tradition in Grisolles, I was invited in January, 2003 to spend a week in this small town of 3,000 inhabitants located near Montauban in the Tarn-et-Garonne department. The person in charge of this small provincial museum hoped to initiate an artist’s project involving the population, as well as bring an outside perspective to the area and its community.
Grisolles is what is called today a small « rurban » town where a rural past – still present – is intertwined with the modern life breathed into it by a new population that works in the nearby metropolis of Toulouse. It is torn between between its rural past and post-industrial development. Things seem to be looked at in an optimistic light, and yet with a touch of fear as regards the cohesion of the social fabric.
In Grisolles there are, as in all of France’s villages and cities, public signs and billboards that become so abundant that they no longer catch anyone’s eye. But something came and sparked an idea in me. Walking in the downtown streets, I was struck by wooden signs stuck in various places and bearing a local bylaw. They brought up the problem of the rudeness of certain dog owners, disrespectful of public hygiene, as regards animal excrement. What interested me was the unusual form of the notice, made hurriedly by a city official. I appreciated the administrative writing that gets right to the point, protected by a transparent plastic sleeve, which was also used for something other than what it was meant for – for display, rather than for filing documents. Something like exasperation and distress could be felt in it, these dog turds endlessly reappearing ; it was tragicomic ! I also thought more seriously about the people I’ve run into here and there, who, while talking about their dog, in reality tell much more about themselves, about their personal lives as well as their difficulty living in community.
So I decided to meet many dog owners in Grisolles, at their homes or elsewhere, to speak with them about their « life companion ». I gathered the ordinary and symptomatic comments people made about themselves and their dogs. All in the course of a rather simple conversation, without an awkward interview. I decided to draw their pets with ball-point pens, children’s pastels, coloured pencils, borrowed on the premises. Some of the drawings I made in their dining rooms. Drawing this way on the expanse of a dining table is better than taking a photo, there’s less « image theft » I feel it, as though a stronger spatial and human envelope existed around me in these moments. This immersion, in tune with what I’m looking for, makes expression easier. I’m interested for this very reason in the innocent practice of drawing, following the example of children that want to draw their dog or cat. It seems that it all begins this way : with wanting to draw a house, a landscape, a dog, a bird.
Some of these sentences I printed out on A4 paper, in the same font as that of the bylaw. I sheathed them in plastic and glued them onto identical signs and wooden stakes. The whole of the piece was put up in the downtown area, where dogs mark their territory by relieving themselves. Using an identical presentation, I dotted the texts with photocopies of my drawings matched to the names of dogs I had met. The dogs’ real names are not the names of the dogs in the drawings. I mixed them up. I don’t want to illustrate anything.
_________________________________________________
Unawareness (2002)
Plexiglass on photographs, storage containers and space
During my travels, as I happened to meet people, I decided to address what people looked at during moments of rest or daydreaming, when attention to productivity slackens. I hypothesized that at these moments, « objects » – that might also be views of landscapes – were liable to enter people’s line of sight in many of their habitual dwelling places : bedroom, office, kitchen, living room, studio… There, according to my idea, people would not want to call on these « objects » with a view to use or profit (material, esthetic, memory-related…). The « object » that I wanted to photograph according to people’s suggestions, in no case needed to be its own referent. It simply needed to « appear » frequently and almost involuntarily, thus inspiring an idea. So I met people in their houses, flats, or more rarely their workplaces, to photograph the « object », the bit of space or landscape, that would surface in them during moments of peace and quiet, in an armchair, during a pause, in the evening lying in bed before going to sleep… I adopted a method : working with a digital camera and asking people to centre the photo themselves. Then I asked the person to write a brief comment or simple phrase on the photo, concerning the thought that had occurred to them. I hoped that the photograph would become a kind of « object » in itself, having a certain amount of weight, that it would be fairly « precious », in spite of the apparent banality of what was represented. I didn’t want these photos to be « exhibited ». The collector, it seemed to me, stores, organizes, files, archives. He « exhibits » less often. Books, cassettes, CDs, DVDs, discs…are put away, stored like a supply of thoughts and ways of perceiving the world. One can handle or approach them too, before penetrating deeper. In regard to people and literature, the « slice of life » is often mentioned. I wanted to make « slices of sight » of sorts, that would be thought-reserves. These sixty encounters with people in their habitat, having generated sixty photo-objects, have since become a collection I call Unawareness. With the help of artist-designer Laurent Hamon, I made two display-storage containers allowing visitors to handle the photos encased in steel and plexiglass. The whole of the piece is displayed in an enclosed space, rather favorable to contemplative thought, reminiscent of a child’s bedroom.
________________________________________________
Garden with Inhabitants (2002)
Grisolles is what is called today a small « rurban » town where a rural past – still present – is intertwined with the modern life breathed into it by a new population that works in the nearby metropolis of Toulouse. It is torn between between its rural past and post-industrial development. Things seem to be looked at in an optimistic light, and yet with a touch of fear as regards the cohesion of the social fabric.
In Grisolles there are, as in all of France’s villages and cities, public signs and billboards that become so abundant that they no longer catch anyone’s eye. But something came and sparked an idea in me. Walking in the downtown streets, I was struck by wooden signs stuck in various places and bearing a local bylaw. They brought up the problem of the rudeness of certain dog owners, disrespectful of public hygiene, as regards animal excrement. What interested me was the unusual form of the notice, made hurriedly by a city official. I appreciated the administrative writing that gets right to the point, protected by a transparent plastic sleeve, which was also used for something other than what it was meant for – for display, rather than for filing documents. Something like exasperation and distress could be felt in it, these dog turds endlessly reappearing ; it was tragicomic ! I also thought more seriously about the people I’ve run into here and there, who, while talking about their dog, in reality tell much more about themselves, about their personal lives as well as their difficulty living in community.
So I decided to meet many dog owners in Grisolles, at their homes or elsewhere, to speak with them about their « life companion ». I gathered the ordinary and symptomatic comments people made about themselves and their dogs. All in the course of a rather simple conversation, without an awkward interview. I decided to draw their pets with ball-point pens, children’s pastels, coloured pencils, borrowed on the premises. Some of the drawings I made in their dining rooms. Drawing this way on the expanse of a dining table is better than taking a photo, there’s less « image theft » I feel it, as though a stronger spatial and human envelope existed around me in these moments. This immersion, in tune with what I’m looking for, makes expression easier. I’m interested for this very reason in the innocent practice of drawing, following the example of children that want to draw their dog or cat. It seems that it all begins this way : with wanting to draw a house, a landscape, a dog, a bird.
Some of these sentences I printed out on A4 paper, in the same font as that of the bylaw. I sheathed them in plastic and glued them onto identical signs and wooden stakes. The whole of the piece was put up in the downtown area, where dogs mark their territory by relieving themselves. Using an identical presentation, I dotted the texts with photocopies of my drawings matched to the names of dogs I had met. The dogs’ real names are not the names of the dogs in the drawings. I mixed them up. I don’t want to illustrate anything.
_________________________________________________
Unawareness (2002)
Plexiglass on photographs, storage containers and space
During my travels, as I happened to meet people, I decided to address what people looked at during moments of rest or daydreaming, when attention to productivity slackens. I hypothesized that at these moments, « objects » – that might also be views of landscapes – were liable to enter people’s line of sight in many of their habitual dwelling places : bedroom, office, kitchen, living room, studio… There, according to my idea, people would not want to call on these « objects » with a view to use or profit (material, esthetic, memory-related…). The « object » that I wanted to photograph according to people’s suggestions, in no case needed to be its own referent. It simply needed to « appear » frequently and almost involuntarily, thus inspiring an idea. So I met people in their houses, flats, or more rarely their workplaces, to photograph the « object », the bit of space or landscape, that would surface in them during moments of peace and quiet, in an armchair, during a pause, in the evening lying in bed before going to sleep… I adopted a method : working with a digital camera and asking people to centre the photo themselves. Then I asked the person to write a brief comment or simple phrase on the photo, concerning the thought that had occurred to them. I hoped that the photograph would become a kind of « object » in itself, having a certain amount of weight, that it would be fairly « precious », in spite of the apparent banality of what was represented. I didn’t want these photos to be « exhibited ». The collector, it seemed to me, stores, organizes, files, archives. He « exhibits » less often. Books, cassettes, CDs, DVDs, discs…are put away, stored like a supply of thoughts and ways of perceiving the world. One can handle or approach them too, before penetrating deeper. In regard to people and literature, the « slice of life » is often mentioned. I wanted to make « slices of sight » of sorts, that would be thought-reserves. These sixty encounters with people in their habitat, having generated sixty photo-objects, have since become a collection I call Unawareness. With the help of artist-designer Laurent Hamon, I made two display-storage containers allowing visitors to handle the photos encased in steel and plexiglass. The whole of the piece is displayed in an enclosed space, rather favorable to contemplative thought, reminiscent of a child’s bedroom.
________________________________________________
Garden with Inhabitants (2002)
Video excerpt
Paris, Dividing lines, salvaged materials, topsoil, plants, paint, urban installation, inhabitants’ actions.
In January, 2002 It was suggested that I consider a piece which could be installed in an empty space contiguous to the Tokyo Palace, in Paris’ 16th arrondissement. This long, narrow site, surprisingly overgrown for such a chic neighborhood, is located between the rue de la Manutention and the Palais, below President Wilson Avenue. The rue de la Manutention begins at the bottom of an immense flight of steps and leads towards the Seine. The Eiffel Tower can be seen nearby. The neighborhood isn’t very welcoming to passersby ; power and money are visible everywhere. Unlike other Parisian neighborhoods, people seem to interact very little. In the winter, the wind rushes through its wide avenues. The few sparse pubs close early in the evening and are closed on Sundays. Everything is terribly costly, even the Saturday morning market on President Wilson Avenue, the only event that livens things up or allows for exchanges between its inhabitants or with the stallholders. I proposed to do something that would make this space into an almost « gratuitous » area, that is, not determined by sole considerations of money and social status. To do so, I decided to divide the space into sixteen plots of land and offer them to volonteers that would cultivate them. So I called on inhabitants of Paris and its suburbs. I sent sixty letters from a dossier of candidates for gardens. Thirty people from diverse social groups came to the meeting I organized. I expected a certain commitment on their part. I asked them to make « their garden », without wanting to show it off, without competing for the « most beautiful garden » I also asked them to work out certain common elements : the sheds, the borders, the hedges… Each plot has become, little by little, a territory with its own esthetic, a reflection of the personality of its « inhabitant » The motley result livens up the cold buildings. On weekends, in the spring and summer, the gardens are often occupied, impromptu picnics take place, the gardeners laugh, talk noisily, passersby stop and chat. In the evening the gardeners still hang about, and the sound of rakes can be heard. When autumn arrives, people chat in the first chill while putting their tools away in the sheds, where the seeds are sleeping.
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
Garden with Mandala (2000)
La Courneuve, circle, salvaged materials, topsoil, plants, wood and sheet metal in park, inhabitants’ actions.
As a part of the biennial event Art Grandeur Nature, it was suggested to me that I make a piece in La Courneuve park, located in the Parisian suburbs. As I strolled in the park, I got the impression it was a place for leisure and relaxation for the inhabitants of a big city in need of air, but most of all, I experienced this park as though it were simply a decor. This place is saturated with signs and signals, with « ecological green »-coloured park furniture. All of this, like those museum plaques bearing the titles of the pieces, defines a space conceived by hygiene and nature pedagogy specialists. I then learned about the site’s agricultural past. Father Surger de Saint-Denis’ vineyard was located here in the xiith century, Saint-Honoré farm in the xviiith, forty metric acres of market gardens in 1925, rented plots in the fifties… Bit by bit the idea of earth, of laboured ground, came to my mind, substituting itself for the overly esthetic and polished idea of the park. I thought less of a landscape to look at, than of nature to transform. Here, where so many peasants from various countries in the world became immigrants in the great megalopolis, I imagined that the laboured earth was repressed, like the mud that was there not that long ago : that of the shantytowns of the fifties. I also thought of the people the French Communist Party mobilized for the Humanité festivals that occurred in this park. The factory worker is often a peasant driven from his land. Today’s immigrant, likewise. They have become the park’s diligent proletarians, now that the lanterns of the Humanité festival have gone out. Gilles Clément, the landscape architect, doesn’t like parks that are too polished either. He « praises the overgrown ». Since Neil Armstrong, everyone thinks more and more that the earth is a garden. So I drew a circle twenty metres in diameter, in the heart of the park, on a huge lawn. Inside the circle I proposed that eight « micro-gardens » be made by inhabitants of La Courneuve that visit the park. I called the result Garden with Mandala. I wanted to make a sculpture that would have the graphic and monumental appearance of the mandala, more than its ritual and mystical content. These micro-gardens, with their triangular shape curved at the base, each one linked to the others, constitute the mandala. This diagram/mandala establishes a relationship between the microcosm and the macrocosm. It gives the project visibility. Inside the circle one feels as though protected from the outside world, but dialogue between gardeners and visitors is still easy.
The Bicyclists (2000)
The Bicyclists Nantes, 2000, Paint on canvas, spaces created by pictures, occupants’ actions
I was invited in 1998, in Nantes, by the Entre-deux Association, to create a project based on the idea of a possible confluence of two neighborhoods, Dervalières and Zola. I didn’t want to engage in an outdoor project by putting up photographs or texts as I had in other projects. I wanted to work on the « interior », on the way a flat, a living room, or a bedroom is arranged. The outdoors, in this context, would be taken into account as a veduta, because I also wanted to make a piece around the idea of the landscape, the word designating both a physical reality and a work of art. I wanted to concern myself with the symbolic power of painting above and beyond its intrinsic quality. I didn’t intend to fill a painter’s shoes in this project. I wanted to live in the shoes of an amateur landscape painter, but without cynicism, lovingly, a little like the artist Jean Le Gac delighting, through his narrative and artistic work, in the figure of the amateur painter. The picture was going to become, for me, not a work in itself, but a « tool ». I hit upon the idea of contacting bicyclists from the two neighborhoods, bicyclists like those whose colourful tights dot the Sunday morning countryside throughout France. And as for the amateur painters, once the good weather arrives, they take out their box of watercolours, their easel, and their portfolio. It’s amazing to see how much the landscape entices and engrosses us, how much it means to us ! My idea was that bikes don’t evoke athletic competition and bodies in pain as much as the landscape as it’s traversed and experienced. I wanted to play on this idea, while taking advantage as much as possible of the practices of my bicyclist « models » So I asked six bicyclists living in the two neighborhoods to pose for me in front of a landscape of their choice, one they loved and crossed during their Sunday bike rides. Next I painted their portrait in their bicycling tights, using the colours or potential artistic ressources they had available in their homes : tubes of gouache for children, markers, walnut stain, tins of house paint, aerosol cans for touching up coaches, anti-rust paint… People hung the pictures up (the format had been calculated according to where they’d be hung) in a part of their house or flat. I photographed this installation, I made a video of these significant moments. These traces are important to me. These people aren’t the owners of the painting. It’s simply at their disposal for life, by agreement between me, them, and the potential acquirer of the whole structure. I created a protocol of conditions for showing the piece and for its use. Law is a part of this artistic work, because the work is there, in the whole process, including the legal process. For me law is a shaping, just as drawing is. Law is what allows us to provide a framework for « group living », and legal principles give meaning to certain important things in communal life. In the du Dourven galery, next, with two collaborating families from Nantes, we recreated two « environments » around the portraits in bycicling tights. The gallery was thus transformed into two flats, decorated by the families themselves, the picture becoming the pretext for generating a space, whereas it’s generally the opposite : the painting acting as a vedute in an interior.
