Human Soul (2025)

[bunniefuu]

ANNE-LAURE: You don't tell yourself

you're going to be an artist.

It's something that lives in us,

that we don't understand right away

and as we grow up,

as we come to analyze things,

as we experiment and meet people,

as we see things,

we gradually assume it.

I've always been inhabited

by things that perhaps

were stronger than me,

so I didn't understand them much

so it could lead to feeling

a bit out of place sometimes.

I think an artist is someone

who lives through expression.

So I think that...

I consider myself an artist from the moment

I find a way to express what I want to say

and to share my world.

This is a special place, I used to

live in this house right there.

And I spent my weekends learning

how to windsurf in this bay.

And to come back here after 18 years

around the world by boat, its pretty...

Incredible because I never thought I'd come back

and in the end, like every good Breton,

there's a legend that says the Breton always comes

home and that's exactly what's happening here,

and I'd never have believed it.

I think it's the cycle of life that does that,

you come back to your roots with a new

energy and a desire to create

in your territory.

ANNE-LAURE: If we hadnt found each other here,

if we hadnt both shared this craving,

and it wasnt intellectualized at the beginning,

it was really a desire to create something together.

rather than a child,

it became obvious to us that it should be through art.

If you ask me What is Human Soul?

I would say that

Human Soul is...

it is born with a question.

and the question is Who are you?

ANNE-LAURE: Human Soul is a search for differences,

it is really exploring what a person is

deep down within themselves.

Its this encounter with others that really

inspires us with Anne-Laure because

its very intimate to ask someone who they are,

it is a question that is rarely asked in the end

and when you ask this question

the answer is often surprising.

The start of my trip around the world in 2004,

I left after graduating from the Beaux Arts in

Toulouse, I set off around the world in 2004,

but to continue my artistic work, well I

accumulated information by making notebooks,

sketchbooks, little notebooks. Here, for

example, is a little notebook that goes back

a year, almost to the day, with the departure

from Brest to Senegal in the first year.

It was a source of information that enabled me

to work on other things afterwards.

My son was born in Colombia because we had to

cross Panama, so normally you have to wait

two or three weeks to get through the canal.

And then it was a two-month wait.

So rather than wait the full two months, we went

back to the Kuna Indians where we'd been before,

but we stayed with them for several

months, as my partner was pregnant at the time.

So we lived with the Kuna Indians for a very

long time, well six months before the baby

and four months after the baby. So here

it's interesting because we had time,

I would sit on the beaches, making

watercolor drawings, I'd recover a little of,

like its often done for notebooks, a little bit of

materials. There are words lying around,

theres a bit of drawing, watercolor, things like that.

But I really wanted to get out of the travel notebook,

it wasn't at all what I wanted to do.

ANNE-LAURE: For me, the thing I feel the most

comfortable with is collage.

Ever since I was very young, I've always

wanted to collect things.

As soon as I see images I like, I rip them

out of the magazines and pick them up

and I collect them and keep them. Sometimes I

even forget them and then I have moments

when I want to assemble these images

together and from there create series.

In this series there was always something very...

A duality between two worlds, and it was really

a whole period that was very healing for me,

because I was going through a difficult

period in my life, with a big break-up and a

big questioning of a lot of things came

through this quest, all the weeks of creation

and collages, something was happening that

was moving me forward.

I met up with Anne-Laure, who was also at the

Beaux-Arts with me, and she was into collage.

She would start from the center

to develop a visual,

I'd start from the page and work

my way back to the center

and the two of us, with the

intersection of our worlds,

moved more into the pure collage she uses, but

we've kept some of the depth of the message

within the encounters. In the villages, for example,

there were lots of people and lots to talk about.

So in the work we're doing with

Human Soul, we're also reassembling,

recontextualizing a lot because it allows us

to imprint ourselves on the page

and at the same time have the depth to tell

where we are and who we are.

With Michel, all of a sudden, everything was

completely embodied. It was people we met,

it was very lively, very very real. And it was

no longer a fantasy or an idea,

It wasn't a concept, it was real life. And it

was a wonderful combination to create these

two universes and, in one fell swoop, to drop

the page and have the world open up to us

two universes and, in one fell swoop, to drop

the page and have the world open up to us

with a territory that was somewhat unlimited,

in which we could inscribe ourselves.

Hi!

Thank you.

I am very happy!

Why?

While I am working

because this is the first time that a yacht comes here

so I am very happy!

Thank you!

This is jelly

you can make jelly with this

It comes from here!

This is very good, its a seaweed

in Filipino we call this Tambalang

My wife, is my fish

And the lobster is your husband?

Yes!

This is the fire to cook the rice.

This is how we cook

on the fire.

this is how the Filipinos cook.

You burn the wood

then you put the pail and then your rice.

You see?

ANNE-LAURE:

Human Soul began with Nelson, a Filipino

fisherman we met on a remote stretch of sand.

He was hyper-resilient

because typhoons every

two years destroyed part of his house

and yet he would rebuild.

He was always smiling and

he had a real flair for ingenuity.

So we really created

a friendly relationship with him.

That was our first portrait.

Thats my experience.

Three our four typhoons came by.

I cant predict my life

I cant predict my life.

I dream when I say,

if my house is destroyed.

I just go somewhere else.

Gods helping me,

so that my house is not destroyed.

We came across some old posts

on an isolated sandbar.

We asked him what this old ruin was

and Nelson told us it was his old house

So it became an obvious choice. In fact,

this is where we'll be doing Nelsons portrait.

ANNE-LAURE: And thats how we came up

with the idea of making

a collage of his portrait,

and then to change its scale

from this small collage to a very large

print at the scale of the landscape

that the person we had met lived in.

To tell the story of this resilient man,

we're going to bring him back to these ruins,

to the ruins of his old home

When you begin a process of sociological or

ethnological interest in others, it's a very virtuous spiral,

because you see everyone's difference,

but at the same time

you feed off it, you don't see it as a handicap.

We had removed his face, we had put

parts of his habitat on his back.

We tried to tell the story of Nelson

as we saw him.

What we can hope is that when people see this,

they'll say to themselves:

I'm going to take an interest in my neighbour,

in the guy across the street,

or at the supermarket.

I'm not saying that they weren't interested before

I'm just saying that

they might be interested in a different way.

ANNE-LAURE: Above all, we realized

that with this way of doing things, this process,

we were making collages and installations,

but it was also about relationships.

And that's what was interesting for us,

to create a bond.

ANNE-LAURE: Yes, it's your flowers!

The red ones?

ANNE-LAURE: Yeah!

Those are the seaweeds.

Those are the seaweeds.

The seaweeds, yes.

The seaweeds over there, look!

What else do you see? Do you see your boat?

Ah, this one?

Very well.

We were very happy to see that he was

happy that we were interested in him.

We were happy to see that he understood

what we were doing.

and that became the beginning of Human Soul, f

and that became the beginning of Human Soul,

because we thought, this is great,

we're going to be able to use this model,

maybe on our next stopover. And that's where

we came up with this model of collage,

construction, deconstruction and confrontation.

And then we asked ourselves if we could arrive

with something like a present. So this

present, it's an artistic present,

will it create the same relationships of

shared curiosity that could exist with children?

When you arrive in a village with

children, it inevitably creates a bond.

Here, it's the artwork that creates the bond.

So we tried it with the Badjos,

who are a very particular ethnic group.

They are sea gypsies.

They have absolutely no status,

they have no passports, they have no land, they

are not recognized in the villages,

They are a very special ethnic group,

ANNE-LAURE: The day we unrolled the canvas

at the foot of their boat,

one of the women with whom we felt most at ease,

put her baby in my arms.

And all of a sudden, a bond was created.

I had the baby in my arms and she was laughing,

discovering fragments of themselves.

And there it was. There was an appropriation of the

canvas, a contact, an exchange and something

that is effectively of the order of an encounter.

It was an awesome dude, unbelievable.

He'd take something simple and turn it

into something complicated...

Darling we have something on our plants.

Little animals?

Small dots, What is it?

Probably because...

Look.

They look like...

do you think they are little insect babies?

Well, there's a chance.

Ah sh*t.

We have to treat it.

We have to go to...

We have to go to Jardiland!

What's going on?

ANNE-LAURE: Im doing your hair.

The family home, the original house,

where Michel grew up,

yes, it was a bit... not abandoned,

but nobody lived there for a long time

and when we came back and we

started to do this Human Soul project

and to come back to Brittany, to this

house, we started to live in all the spaces

and this swimming pool, with its volume

and dimensions, was initially used as a

workshop to cut out

our large collages

and we began to appropriate this space,

which was lying fallow.

As we co-created in this

space and thought about the interior,

we said to ourselves, this space is crazy and it's

silly to keep it to ourselves. We can use it

to make our own creations, but we also want

to invite other artists to come

and experiment with things.

And what we found so beautiful

in this story was to share,

to share this place, to share this space.

So wait, maybe I'll stop it from slipping

It still has the sand...

ANNE-LAURE: From Borneo.

Here we gain some space.

ANNE-LAURE: The funny thing is that its back in...

In the water. He's wet.

He's wet like on the beach.

ANNE-LAURE: Yeah.

It's quite extraordinary to have this place

that can host the Badjaos again

and to be able to show the public the exhibition

almost as if they were there,

because it's going to be quite immersive.

There will be sound,

there will be videos, there will be this canvas

with water and the vibration of water.

So I think we'll manage to create something

quite immersive that will make you feel a bit

like you're with the Badjaos.

The reason we're embarking on this adventure

is that we've found

a whole host of people

who want to follow us in this adventure.

Already here on site, we've

done a first exhibition with the ZAD.

Following this exhibition, some of the

artists we've befriended a little more

who follow us and encourage us and help us

experiment, will be coming to exhibit here.

And interestingly, it's pretty much the same

thing. It's like living on a boat: you have

to accept movement and uncertainty. And I

think we're very, very used to uncertainty.

Now it's a question of how we're going to

reinvent ourselves, how we're going to build

a new universe with this space, this place,

this jewel box that is, that is divine.

ANNE-LAURE:

Here I remember this desire to try

and occupy the page completely,

but there were things

that I found interesting, you know.

There was also this structure on the island

where they would go to land.

It was way more more complex and it's

true that we simplified it afterwards,

for the installation,

the final installation.

And then we move over to the Tagbanuas,

where what amused us was that, as they

were divers, we played with fins and masks

where what amused us was that, as they

were divers, we played with fins and masks

The Tagbanuas are an ethnic group who live in

the south of Coron, in the north of Palawan.

They have been displaced from the northern

Philippines and have been given

a magnificent island called Coron.

There was an area where,

during the dry season

you can't go by boat because it's windy and not

conducive to entering the bay.

We had been talking about it for years.

Then one day, we were lucky enough

to have the wind turn,

it was beginning to be the rainy season.

And on the way into the bay, we saw some mazes,

an underwater maze of perspective lines in every

direction, and we thought wow, this is so beautiful.

ANNE-LAURE: It was very graphic, visually...

We later learned that it was an ancestral

knowledge, where they tie little bits of seaweed

to grow and then harvest them.

It was while we were tangled with these lines

that we came up with the idea of using

them as a picture rail.

For the duration of an installation,

we wanted to experiment something.

The Tagbanuas, like the Bajaos, have a

reputation for strong apnea.

Theyre often said to have a third lung,

since they spend so much time underwater

to harvest the seaweed or to get shellfish.

It was symbolically powerful to

put their portraits back underwater.

ANNE-LAURE: Holy cow!

ANNE-LAURE: Wow!

It's your house!

Your name? Im Anne-Lo.

Michel.

Leydon.

Nice to meet you Leydon.

ANNE-LAURE: Nice to meet you.

House?

House yeah.

This is a portrait.

A painting.

A painting.

ANNE-LAURE:

We played with the scale and the engine

because, in fact, when we first met him,

he was struggling with an engine and they spent

days repairing it, so we made it so big,

because it really took up a lot of his

time, this old man.

He was carrying the engine on his back. We saw the

moment they managed to turn it back on

and they were very happy.

It was really quite an adventure.

It was a bit like they were

shipwrecked on a beach,

trying to make their way out

with this engine.

ANNE-LAURE:

Thats why we managed to spend

a little time with them.

Because of the engine.

ANNE-LAURE:

We want to tell the story of all these

different states of being in the world,

without embellishing them, just

showing them as they are.

Its a kind of opening that's not

idealistic. It's not, it's just opening up

the field of what another way of being

than our own can be.

Leydon, its Leydon!

Thats the sound of water,

thats not the sound of the video.

Obviously!

Obviously, water !

Everythings connected.

Were not even telling you her name is Lo.

Its not bad this shot.

I can still see myself. Look, I'm

blowing his regulator out to empty it.

You see, all these rushes are going to

look great in the pool.

What I found extraordinary

was that they had the curiosity

to dive in and see what was going on

and that the encounter took place underwater.

ANNE-LAURE: No, because you wanted to contour it

No, I know, but what I meant is

that you had to study the model.

Then we would have contoured it.

The interesting thing is...

But this saves time, look.

There Ill give you Mohammed contoured.

I didn't say it was wrong, I agreed with you.

We always agree in the end.

So we always agree in the end. It's perfect.

In the end, the good guys always win.

But what's certain is

that I don't think we...

I don't think we ever got

to the end of a process

where the other

didn't agree with the realization.

Because I think the frustration

would be too great.

You'd hear it every day.

But I told you no, but no, but no, but no.

And even then, we can't do it, we both have

to be satisfied with the result.

ANNE-LAURE: So

So then...

The Cit de Refuge is the emblematic

building of the Salvation Army in France,

since the building was built by a renowned

architect, Le Corbusier, with a very special...

ANNE-LAURE: With incredibly beautiful architecture.

It was in a magnificent setting, and at the

same time, it was as if all the poverty

in the world at a given moment was

gathered in this marvelous setting

and it was very dissonant, very disturbing.

That's why we wanted to continue telling

the story of this Human's Soul project,

but rather than being at

the end of the world,

to tell it here in our society,

to precisely show this

discrepancy in our society.

The first meeting was a beautiful story.

I'm a member of

a group for women at the Salvation Army.

We had been allocated a room

by the management

and I found these two there setting up.

I called out to them and said: wait a minute,

you're not allowed to be here

because this belongs to me,

this room belongs to us.

They were a bit surprised

so I said: no, calm down, try to explain.

And when they said: no, it was

the management that sent us,

I replied that I would go and

see the management myself

because you have no right to be there.

We looked at each other thinking:

well, were here trying to establish contact

and suddenly we were already in a trap.

And there we were...

So we...

ANNE-LAURE: So we got kicked out, that was it.

We got kicked out, apologized, got our stuff

went downstairs to the lobby,

A huge magnificent lobby with

great volumes, very Le Corbusier.

Very impressive.

Truly impressive, imposing and

where everything echoed.

And finally, it was a gift that Flora made us.

The first time I met Michel and Anne-Laure

was over a game of dominoes.

They explained a little about what they were

all about. That they had traveled a lot

with their boat and all that, and that

they made art. And then I thought, why not

try a new activity, a new way

of using my ten fingers.

ANNE-LAURE:

The aim of this project was really to show

that the people who we featured in Human Soul

at the beginning in the Philippines, in Borneo

and who everyone found so exotic - saying:

wow they are so beautiful,

we wanted to show that if you

took them out of their context

and they found themselves in our society

all of the sudden they would be stigmatized

and confined to the fringes of our society.

It is in fact so difficult to

find our place in this society

and it's often very complicated

to see the light.

In this artistic project we are

for the most part surrounded

by sensitive, beautiful people.

Whatever people say,

whatever they may think.

My name is Hedi,

I've been in France for 20 years now.

I'm from Tunisia.

I still have problems with

my residency papers.

I've submitted a file

to the police department.

They replied by saying

I have to be deported.

I've submitted an appeal.

I went to court.

I'm waiting for the answer.

Haven't gotten it yet. But here I am.

I've just had three strokes, you can't see that

a pulmonary embolism, you can't see it.

I've spent months in a coma,

you can't see it.

I've been hemiplegic on my left side,

it doesn't show.

I was in a wheelchair, I had tubes,

I had diapers and here I am today.

I wasn't able to lift my foot before.

Things are much better now.

There are other people here

who also have stories

and this collage made it possible

during the cutting process,

for some of the residents get

to know each other.

Because, while cutting things out

you realise Hey so you did this, you did sport

he made this, there were

They were those moments of

dialogue between us

that united us.

I have known many people who

have had difficulties.

Sometimes we think we

have it harder than others,

until we meet people who have

had more than we did.

We had the opportunity to meet all the

inhabitants of Cit Refuge,

both those who worked there

and those who lived there

and as the journey progressed,

we managed to make

one collage, two collages, three collages.

We had recorded

all these clips of voices, these phrases

and we thought to ourselves

that people always say beautiful things

without realizing it.

So we made a sound collage

of all these recordings,

which we played back in a large room at Cit

Refuge, with video installations retracing

the journey we had made

with the people there.

ANNE-LAURE: What we like is small and big

at the same time

that change of scale.

We liked the idea of saying: now

we're going to take these little collages

and we're going to make you get out

of the Cit de Refuge

because it was during COVID lockdown.

We were fascinated by Le Corbusier's architecture

where light is hyper-important

and there are huge glass blocks

that we had the idea

of transforming into screens.

ANNE-LAURE:

It was their portrait radiating through

the walls. The walls became porous

and they all escaped for a little while

through the windows.

It allows us to get together and talk to

people from the outside too.

Show them that even if we're just passing

through the Cit de Refuge,

that we can make art out of

what we've been through in life,

that it's not because you

don't have money or you're homeless,

that you don't know how to do anything.

We know how to show

what we can do with our values.

It's taking shape

and it really defines us well.

Here you really see yourself

in your own right

and that's quite the impression,

it's really real

This is really...

Its...

It's magnificent !

I'm at a loss for words because

it's really, really beautiful.

This really showed

that we weren't just there to do a little

workshop and stay inside the building.

Already we were getting them

outside of their home.

And then we had another ambition.

It was the springtime when we said OK,

you've been on the walls of your home,

now, we're going to put you back on the street,

but not in a small way.

We're going to make huge collages

and stick them all over the rue du Chevaleret.

That became the big street art campaign.

In life we need hope.

When you live, you can't get discouraged

and I think I'm the result of that.

Because if I'd let myself go

I wouldn't be alive today.

I couldn't have worked

or today be stuck on a wall,

a giant wall like that which is behind me.

When I saw it finished the tears really flowed,

they were tears of joy!

It's true that this is my story,

it encompasses a lot of who I am.

And this collage

was done according to my story

so I've expressed myself.

I'm expressing myself here.

When I see that, I see myself.

I see Flore in her totality.

ANNE-LAURE:

Bring it to me, I just want to see

if I can get a cutter.

No, that's much too big.

The little one.

Its not too big.

Yes it is. You've seen what we have to cut,

I think it'll be much better.

It's O.K. I'll take those scissors.

ANNE-LAURE: Olivier we met him

almost two years ago.

The thing we were sensitive to, in fact, was

that in the same way, we started Human Soul

and we did Nelson,

we were taken with his resilience

and how well he resisted so well

to the challenges of life.

He also approached things

with a great deal of philosophy,

a sense of perspective that was a strength.

Olivier was a successful entrepreneur and suddenly,

when you find out you have an illness, the

first thing you do is shut up.

Otherwise your company could go under

because no one will follow you.

And he did just the opposite.

He took part in this podcast where we

were blown away because,

he lay himself bare.

ANNE-LAURE: So we had just taken this photo...

Its Olivier who took the photo.

ANNE-LAURE:

It was Olivier who took the photo of the

entire promotion of that year

of the Planches Contact Photography Festival.

So it's all the artists from the

foundation. It's a great team.

And then we said to him:

Olivier, we want to take a photo of you too.

So he played along and the constraint

was to make him stand up and then,

he settled into that position.

I like it a lot. I really like this photo because he

really played along, he put all his energy into it.

He stood up, he steadied himself and

then, little by little, Michel let him go.

And then, spontaneously,

he took his pose.

And what we find extraordinary is that his

posture is one of open arms, truly open hands

and actually looking up to the heavens.

As if he'd predicted it. I mean, I don't

know, it lasted two minutes. I said to him:

As if he'd predicted it. I mean, I don't

know, it lasted two minutes. I said to him:

As if he'd predicted it. I mean, I don't

know, it lasted two minutes. I said to him:

Olivier, here, I think you're the epitome of

what we want to represent.

It's the ultimate resilience.

to be able to reinvent yourself,

and on top developing new processes like this,

is incredible.

And there, in his pose, there's a

real form of hope and at the same time...

I don't know, when you say it's Christ-like,

it's true that you want to ask yourself:

What is he looking at?

In the end, the Human Soul

project is always about this

collage of life, this construction

and deconstruction.

We like to say that we all

have shocks in our lives,

more or less violent ones

that accumulate

Sometimes you can get through it,

and then sometimes it all falls apart.

We can imagine that for Olivier, in his relationship

with his illness, his whole world collapsed.

and what was really striking was

the extent to which he was able to...

To build something else out of his past.

Michel and Anne-Laure's

Human Soul project

is very close to our hearts,

because Olivier is an ambassador for

so many good intentions,

with Photo for Food, his foundation which

works against precariousness in France,

but he's also raising funds for the Brain

Institute, because he himself was diagnosed

with an incurable disease - ALS, also known

as Charcot's disease or Stephen Hawkins disease,

and he was told that

he had three years to live.

It's Le Havre on the other side.

It could look great in the shot.

ANNE-LAURE:

In fact, it's going to be very urban,

there will be a contrast

between the beach and...

I wonder if we'll be able to see it.

But it would be nice to be able to see it.

Wait, I'll put it on your back.

I got it.

ANNE-LAURE: Youre OK?

It's OK.

ANNE-LAURE: Careful, its gonna slide.

No, no, were OK.

ANNE-LAURE: Are you sure?

Yeah.

As with Olivier Goy project,

the first thing that grabs me

in Human Soul is the heart.

Its the energy that

comes out of Human Soul.

The way they integrate the landscape

with their collages,

in such a dreamlike form,

talking about issues that

are important to us today,

like ecology and our

footprint in the world,

in such a poetic way, I think

they're on the right track.

Id like to remember that I'm joining a gallery of fighters.

its an honor to be in this beautiful gallery

of people proudly wearing their scars.

Illness galvanizes me.

It opened my eyes to the value of life

and of the present moment.

Not being afraid of death.

means enjoying life to the full.

Taking advantage.

Without regretting yesterday,

without fearing tomorrow.

Fully being alive.

How are you?

It's a pleasure to see you

Were back!

Yes!

How are you?

Sorry, we're being filmed.

We're back with a vengeance, we want to

create an installation on the roof.

Oh yes, they told us about it earlier,

Malik came by.

We're going to cut, cut, cut!

and bravo for everything you did here...

How are you? All good?

Hi there! Hi there!

ANNE-LAURE: How are you?

Hi, there. How are you? That's Michel...

ANNE-LAURE: Hi there! Hello!

This is Denis and Mr Diallo...

I'm Michel.

And Mr Dominguez.

The funny thing is that

this project on the roof

was the very first project we proposed

to start this adventure

and finally, after three years

of projects and adventures, we're ending on a

high note with this idea that we had at the start

where we really wanted to put portraits on

the roof and be able to see you from the sky.

In fact, the idea is that each time we asked

people to tell us about themselves, we created

their portrait in the form of a collage.

Maybe Malik showed you some of these.

Afterwards, from these small collages,

we make large collages and

recontextualize them in the environment,

in which people live. It's our way of

marking this territory, this piece of land.

So we don't have a blank page, our blank page

is a piece of territory seen from the sky.

In this case, the site of the Cit de Refuge and

from the sky we will be taking a photo

of our XXL installation that will show

your place in this city.

Will you come with me, gentlemen

and we'll go get the collages.

Oh! Zanabou!

It's been a long time.

You got your papers?

Yes, that was settled - thank you.

Wait, that's amazing news !

I have the Carte Vitale, that's the

drivers license.

This is my ID.

This is ID of my home country

and the Pass Navigo.

Frankly, it's life-changing. I have all the cards now

I'm just waiting for work.

Thanks to God first of all,

the good Lord who sees all

and to the Cit de Refuge of course

and being here again makes me happy

we're back to make the posters and stuff,

We're here to help Anne-Laure and Michel.

The more time passes, the happier we are

to continue the adventure.

They put a lot of joy in here, so...

So it's really important. It was

really important to take a little bit of people's souls,

to highlight them and also to

show that they exist

All of this experience has been really great

In fact, a lot people participated.

I think it's something

that was very successful.

Everyone today

is asking about them.

They really left a mark, an important

imprint on the people here

ANNE-LAURE:

We should have brought knee-pads.

It warms the heart to be here.

It's heartwarming because you always meet new

people and here, we have an incredible team.

We didn't know each other this morning and

here we are and they've really got

a good grasp of the project. We're super

efficient and it's great, it's a really good time,

it's really pleasant

It's cool

Im so happy everyone is here

It's about conviviality and getting

to know each other.

I love meeting new people.

Malik, were gonna do this one.

Were over here.

ANNE-LAURE: Its all good, no?

I think you're on top of things, Mr Diallo.

Yeah, you got it?

Yes, I'm good.

It's the conclusion of an adventure

with the residents of Cit de Refuge

and this magnificent building

by Le Corbusier,

inhabited by these beautiful souls.

And I think our friend Le Corbusier would be

very, very happy to see this.

Thats me?

It's been a pleasure for me.

It allowed me to

move around, I'm very happy.

I've met a wonderful team.

I'm sorry we have to leave

each other since you're going to go.

I would want to continue

to always work with you.

It's been a great, great pleasure.

I'm very, very happy.

I'm blown away by the

alignment of the planets.

The plants are in their place, the collages

are in their place. People are in their place.

We've settled into the movement

and weve found our place.

With a little tear

for the people we're leaving

because weve developed

a strong relationship for this experience.

The portraits of the people who were

with us during this covid, during a year

and it's quite touching to see them there again,

printed on the building.

ANNE-LAURE:

So tonight's event is a double one. It's both

the opening of our gallery La Piscine

and the inauguration of our exhibition.

A double challenge.

It's a bit exciting to think, well, are

people going to come?

Will they be curious enough

to come and discover this space?

I have the impression

that people are talking about it,

so I'm afraid there'll be a lot of

people, and at the same time, I don't know.

Maybe there won't be.

I have no idea, actually.

It came gradually.

It's always the spacewe live in.

So here we have

three video projectors

we'd used for the Salvation Army.

So it's a triptych of each story, each portrait

and now it's going to be presented

tonight in the pool with DJ B-Side

who's going to do a sound improvisation.

So we realize it's quite a feat

to open an art venue

right in the center of this neighborhood.

And this performance, in fact,

is yet another Human Soul performance,

because we're bringing back all the portraits

we've built up along the way.

We bring them back to

my childhood home

and we use them to integrate

into the social fabric here.

So we're back to building

relationships through art,

with the portraits we've

created around the world.

The question is, will it work?

Will it resonate with the people?

I think it will work.

In any case, it's already worked because it's

allowed us to meet some pretty exceptional people.

It's partly thanks to the people I've met

recently that I'm taking the trouble to create this.

So, it's a kind of a...

An endless search...

that never stops because every new

encounter inspires us to do something else.

ANNE-LAURE:

We've always worked on our project

starting with the individual,

then the ethnic group

and here, it's like creating a Human Soul

at the scale of a neighborhood

and to see the reaction,

to see if it can take hold

if it can federate, if it can create...

Not a community,

because we're not community-minded

but it's just about creating something

and bonding us

around this project.

Since its a meeting place,

all we want is for everyone to tell their story and

bring something to the table.

So its a challenge!

Human Soul is best described

as an encounter.

and in Human Soul, there's

the human and the soul.

And finally, in encounters, we find - we must

find - the human soul, that is to say, what

makes people come alive, what makes us want

to live, to love, to undertake,

to go out and meet others.

Human Soul, were in it,

we're in this soul...

They've found these individual beauties in

places you'd never imagine existed.

We think we'd have to go

to other planets to see this.

So it's an interstellar voyage and...

We're floating

When we meet Nelson, with all

his beauty and all his...

We can obviously see that

he lives in another country,

completely different from ours,

but at the same time,

it's a kind of mirror of ourselves too.

In the same way, when you see the

Salvation Army,

it offers a kind of beauty of the other

and curiosity about the other.

And when you come out

of this encounter with Human Soul,

it makes you want to see even more, to

go out and meet others too,

whoever they may be, in the street.

And this is a form of... love

or at least a greater interest in others.

ANNE-LAURE: You know, we were afraid.

We were afraid because we said so: tonight,

we get naked, doubly naked.

In other words, when you're an artist

and you have an exhibition,

you're always worried about

how your work will be perceived.

So we both got naked

because we showed our work,

our collages, our photos.

So already as artists, we're wondering

how our work will be perceived,

but more than that, we were opening up

our home, telling people about our lives.

In the end,

this suggestion of an elsewhere,

with people who, through resilience

with people who, through resilience

develop this richness

of savoir vivre

Well...

When we share it, it reassures everyone

and in fact we are really happy

and its quite moving.

thats cool

I'd like to finish by saying that when you

meet a beautiful person...

You keep them

Find a way, find a way

to live an adventure with them.