In November 1993, Usinor Sacilor shut down the Unimétal Normandie steel plant (SMN). The colossal factory ran day and night, offering a vision of endless machinery ablaze... For years, I watched the sky glow red with a fire smoldering above us.
...Its infernal cycle of sound and light came to an abrupt halt.
As a visual artist, I inhabit sites laden with memory: by allowing voices to circulate once more, the energy of these places becomes visible and capable of feeding new networks...
A book: conversations between steelworkers and young performers.
Two video works: one chronicling the last smelting, the other a poetic fiction in which the fire becomes a vessel of collective remembrance.
La Grande Veilleuse, directed by E. Leverrier, with support from the Pleins-Feux association.
Art book-object, published by Jean-Michel Place Editions (no longer available for sale)
Pierre ROBERT, steelworker:
"SMN FIRES, a vision of the working-class world through the prism of fire."