And changed they have. One half of the buildings is down, gradually erased by the machines, first tearing them down to rubble, then making piles with bricks, piles with metals, etc. These piles are picked up by a pair of tippers, who slowly go their way up to the water station and deposit everything into a new huge pile. They dig deep and muddy, black trenches onto what was a grass path, going back and forth like tired, giant insects. A couple of guys from the nearby project got the authorization of the site foreman to pick up the metals they could find onto the pile. It's funny how they agreed together on that, like an oral contract with shared interested. The two guys will most likely sell out these metals ; and while they are there, they prevent any damage to happen to the expensive water pump working on the other side of the water station, slowly emptying it. Indeed one week-end, a few weeks ago, some unidentified guys from the project cut a piece of the pipe and stole some cables. T., the foreman, warned us several times against "them", explaining that he once saw a bunch roaming around with large knives. "At this hour of the day it's ok," says he as we arrived, at usual, by the end of the morning. "They're still sleeping. But they come out by late afternoon. If they ever come by you, don't argue, just run." True that with our photo equipment and the flashing security jackets, we're definitly spotted as strangers. We never had trouble really, though it's true one day, as we had came to the water station through the project, we have been almost thrown out by a band of kids, the very same ones that nicely agreed to be photographed in front of the water station a few days ago. That day school was out, and the half-dozen streets of the project were filled with kids at mid-day, screaming and running around. But - never saw the ones with the knives. After that happened, T. hired a couple of nightwatchmen more for the weekends.
We have good relations with that guy, and it's for the best. First we have to be grateful to him letting us come and go almost as we please. We're under his responsibility, and he could have just told us to forget about it. We're not working for anyone, either his demolition society, nor their client, the local metropolis. He's friendly, and seems always happy to answer our dozens of curious questions about the demolition and his plans for it.
But more deeply, what i feel the most thankful for is that he prevented us from sinking into a simple feeling of anger towards the workers and what they do to what became, as we retrospectively realise, our workshop for a year and a half now. If he had rejected us, we would have been compelled to watch the disappearance of Odomez at a distance, without understanding. Maybe watching the whole site from the burned out roof of one of the Compagnons' buildings, as we did once.
Whereas this long agony of Odomez appears on a much less painful way to us as we can still visit the site once a week. And we realise how much destruction was also a full part of it. Each time a building gest crashed, it also opens new ways of seeing the others, new perspectives, not to mention access to rooms that have been shut for decades. Things that we wouldn't have discovered about Odomez if it had stayed wild. Reminds me of that psychological story of the kid who crashes his toy to see the insides, to see how it works. But of course, sometimes, you realise that things won't come up as easily as they got down.
Last monday, we had arrived for about a quarter of an hour when T., who was passing by, came over to us to say hello. Aurélie and I were both standing on the remnants of the former huge hall, once used by the Compagnons to stock their stuff. A week ago, a roof was above our heads, in the large and dark hall, scanded by the copper green metallic girders. But we were standing both fascinated, as a tiny part of the building had been left standing by the machines, to avoid disturbing the guys just beneath that wall still busy with the asbestos. Creating a strange vision of the hall still existing but now exposed to the weather and the sunlight. Water started to gather in flakes on the tired concrete floor, reflecting the girders and the windows, and creating beautiful Stalker-like visions with thing drowned in it. Switches were still on the wall, like nothing had happened for a century. I even stumbled upon a copy of Sega Saturn's game Fifa 97 : box, CD, book, everything was there if you need it ; a trace of the Compagnons' 20 years passage. They couldn't, eventually, erase it completely.
Aurélie was readying her camera on the tripod for a new photo in her serie. T. asked us what exactly we were photographying. I could only answer in a whisper : "There's so much things to shoot !" He laughed. "You have imagination."
Then he started explaining that we week before, they had demolished the other standing building, on the other half of the site. We hadn't seen it yet, as it was hidden from where we were. "It all crumbled at once like a house of cards. We pulled one beam, and everything crashed down with it." The whole thing was about 25 meters wide and 50 meters long, on two floors.
I don't know what i would have liked better, if i could have chosen : be there to see it or not ? and would it have been less bitter if it took three weeks as they planned it would ?
It has been weeks since i was thinking about this moment : when the giants would fall. These anthropomorphic silhouettes had emerged from the disappearance of the roofs. They linked me deeply and emotionally to the whole place, like figures to salute on arrival. At first, i thought it was too obvious, too simple, but why deny any longer that have an anthropomorphic relationship with Odomez ?
By inhabiting it, we gave it (again) a human dimension. Sure, it was never completely void of human presence. Our year is not much compared to the 20 of the Compagnons, who didn't fail to come watching from the other side of the fence, as the machines tore down their building, including some of the bedrooms they had occupied for a while. And the wilder parts have always been used as a temporary shelter by people around, drinking alcohol and who knows what else. Myself, the night after, drowned in half-asleep songes filled with visions of the now buried rooms, like i was trying to pull them out of the darkness they are sinking into. It's nothing like comparing this to the loss of a loved human being, of course.
But first, pointing out that emotional relationship is important to me, for a negative reason. It allows us, what we do and did there, to be distinguished from and over-seen and vile desire to collect places like theses like trophies, like a sport, and extract spectacular images from them. There's dozens of blogs of that sort on the Internet, taking pride from exploring dead/forbidden places. I more and more tend to see these as almost pornographic, driven by a pure scopic desire, used as a spare for a missing real act. One thing that we tried to avoid at all costs, knowing that anyway, what we could do would at best transform into something different from the place itself, and never document it, never give a real feeling of what it was. Places like these are too complex and too polymorphic to be understood on a single, speedy visit.
On a more positive hand, Odomez is of course also a mirror for our selves, and i think this is partly why it works well as a workshop. We see ourselves, our relations to the passing of time, to the nature of modern objects and artifacts, to the relation between man, pollution and nature, in all these rooms. We just found there, formed in cement, concrete, iron, things we had more or less unconsciously in mind. Thus, it also pushed us further, not only by expliciting those ideas, but by imagining what we would create out of them. How we would print our mark on them, how we would handle creatively with what is commonly thought as dead.
For this reason, one thing we fear is what our productions will become when the very foundations of those century-old buildings are erased. When the heap on the side of the water station is bulldozed inside the emptied lake, thus forming, literaly, the tomb of Odomez. As an example, my photographic production has never seemed more important to me, quantitatively and qualitatively, than since i'm working almost exclusively there, and i don't know how or if it will survive. Taking a single picture in a city street or in a house feels awkward. Of course, we already have vague ideas of things to do on the nude site, but will it be powerful enough to stand only on the fragile foundations formed by our former works, our memories, and the legend, the imaginary that we feel is already coming out of them ? I feel it will likely be the hardest part of it all. All the while succeeding in creating out of a sense of loss, out of our emotions, without getting crudely emotional nor exhibiting personal affects that certainly are not unique, and are not the most interesting man have felt.
So, once again, Odomez sends us back our own reflection as we gaze at it, sinking. For what once was a common place, a place for usual habits and lives, has succeeded in transforming its abandonment into something beautiful and absolutely singular, we wonder if we ever will be able to do the same.
