La traversée des désirs

In June 2021, a festive and convivial walk will reveal the remembrances and desires collected during the three years of work in the urban space. This site-specific project, one of the most important outputs of Le désir de regarder loin, will develop along a 12 km pedestrian path designed by the artist connecting the ZEF theatre to the Busserine de la Gare Franche in the district St. Antoine to the north of Marseilles.

La traversée des désirs (the desires crossing) is an invitation to take time, broaden horizons, cross very different landscapes and atmospheres following the pace of one’s footsteps. The walk is an opportunity to journey through the multiple identities of the areas and find the inhabitants’ desires in a positive drive toward discovery overcoming the prejudice marking the neighbourhoods “second-class”. Displayed along the entire walkway will be the posters with the collected desires, drawings, and photographs, a sort of choral visual narration in unceasing dialogue with the surroundings.    

For the artist, these billboards are a sort of alternative advertising campaign created with the complicity of the individuals and communities living near the exhibition areas. 

Along the walking path participants will meet the different groups the artist has worked with during the project: gardeners, boxers, pom pom girls, etc in a sort of unveiling of the real-life inhabiting the surroundings. The path will end at the Gare Franche du Zef with a festive installation and the serving of the breads of desire, baked for the occasion by former bread atelier participants.