Flying Houses

A project by Laurent Chéhère

Inspirated by a sad circus in northern Paris along a dusty higway; by the Zampano Circus in the Federico Fellini’s movie “La Strada” (1954); by the black and white atmosphere of Bruce Davidson’s photos and also the Wim Wenders’s masterpiece “Wings of Desire” (1987). This film tells an impossible love story : “ Perched on the shoulder of a colossal statue and observing humans, an angel falls in love with a trapeze artist”. Poetry, darkness, drama, love, all the ingredients of the human comedy are there. In my picture, my angel is played by a sad clown. He’s dressed as Napoleon and smoke a cigarette on the snowy roof. Il est inspiré d’un cirque poussiéreux échoué le long du “périph”; du cirque Zampano dans le film “La Strada” de Federico Fellini (1954); des photos noir et blanc de Bruce Davidson et surtout du chef d’oeuvre de Wim Wenders “Les Ailes du Désir” (1987). Ce film raconte une histoire d’amour impossible : “Dans le Berlin d’avant la chute du mur, juché sur l’épaule d’une statue colossale et observant l’humanité, un ange tombe amoureux d’une trapéziste”. La poésie, la noirceur, le drame, l’amour, tous les ingrédients de la comédie humaine sont là. Mon ange à moi est joué par un clown triste. Déguisé en Napoléon, il fume une cigarette sur le toit enneigé du chapiteau.

By using the distance, Laurent proposes a different point of view and alert against preconceived ideas and prejudices. All the ingredients are there, comedy, drama, poetry, darkness, onirism, laughter and tears… Everything becomes entangled.

The Flying Houses are inspired by a poetic vision of old Paris, by Jules Vernes, Albert Robida, Moebius, Hayao Miyazaki, Albert Lamorisse, Wim Wenders, Federico Fellini, Marcel Carné, Jean Cocteau and a lot of others references. These buildings are also inspired by poor and cosmopolitan neighborhood of Paris where lives Laurent Chéhère. Through a tragic and melancholic report, they testify poetically and subtly of an alarming contemporary reality by revealing meanders and concerns of a class impoverished by the society, in particular the Gypsies and the immigrants. The author isolates these buildings from their urban context and releases them from the anonymity of the street to tell the life, the dreams and the hopes of these inhabitants. Technically, it’s a photomontage. After a sketch, he photographs hundreds of elements: roof, windows, gutter, fireplace, characters, antennas, graffiti and sky, then assembles everything with a digital retouch software on his computer. In gallery, the images are shown in large format and let the curious observer to discover details and hidden references of these accurate reconstructions by proposing a double reading, one by far and one closely.

Laurent is born in 1972 at the foot of the Parisian hill of Ménilmontant, a neighborhoods he explores with the same unceasing curiosity as he does in Bamako, Lhasa, Tokyo, Valparaiso or Srinagar. Early on his life, he was immersed in the images of popular culture. His father would make scripted holiday films with his Super 8 camera, his mother transmits the virus of drawing and his brothers was passionate by theater… and the young Laurent? He dreams in the atelier of his grand father Joseph, a house painter and typographer of a village in Normandy. To his young eyes, the place was extraordinary as Alibaba’s cave. Of course it’s not enough to be an artist but you never know!

Thus, he came to spend the last 20 years traveling around the world taking photographs starting with his own city. A veritable tower of Babel where you can meet the world crossing the street. These working class neighborhoods of Paris are his playing field, his principal source of inspiration, his own point of departure and arrival. It’s here in the places, where every street corner offers an escape through the foreigners accents, the spice perfumes, the orientation of satellite dish, that he discovered a passion for travel, and for people and stories from around the world. It’s there, also, where he returns to better tell these stories. And because his inspirations are numerous and varied, he chose to bring them together in these flying houses that carry their universe, their atmosphere, their history, everything that the artist wanted to put there, but also everything the public will want to see there.

: It’s a small and quiet house with nothing special, maybe in a suburban district with nothing special too. It’s not the most beautiful, nevertheless there is something harmonious in the simplicity of the features, it seems to have been drawn by a child. C’est une petite maison tranquille et sans histoire du fin fond d’une banlieue et d’un quartier pavillonnaire peut-être ennuyeux. Ce n’est pas la plus belle, pourtant il y a quelque chose d’harmonieux dans la simplicité de ses traits, elle semble avoir été dessiné par un enfant.

: This theatre was destroyed in 1850 during the construction of the Place de la République in Paris. Its most famous resident was Jean-Baptiste Debureau and his Pierrot : a mute character. When he had trouble with the Justice, all Paris comes to his trial, not to see him but to hear for the first time the sound of his voice. Ce théâtre a été détruit en 1850 lors de la construction de la Place de la République à Paris. Son plus célèbre résident était Jean-Baptiste Debureau et son personnage muet. Quand il eu des démêlés avec la justice, tout Paris vint à son procès, non pas pour le voir, mais pour entendre pour la première fois le son de sa voix.

: A building that has gone dry his laundry near the district of La Chapelle where it was no longer welcome. Cet immeuble du quartier de LaChapelle s’en va faire sécher son linge loin de chez lui où il n’est plus le bienvenu.

: The flames burn everything in their path, like a tabula rasa. Could this burning building also be a rebirth? Les flammes brûlent tout sur leur passage comme on fait table rase. Cet immeuble en feu serait-il aussi celui d’une renaissance?

: It is a Parisian building where are mixed the references to a horror movie “The murderer in rue Morgue” (1932) adapted by a short novel of Edgar A.Poe (there is a portrait of him in the 3rd floor) and the sad but true story of Zizi Bamboula. Was it a man? Was it a monkey? It’s that wondered the Parisian population in September 1908 when it discovered it arriving from Borneo Island. It was presented as “an apeman arisen from a negress and from a gorilla”. It had no hair and looked like a man. It aroused the debate in the newspapers of the whole world. The scholars were in turmoil until naturalists declared that the unfortunate Zizi Bamboula, far from asserting certain nauseating theories on the Evolution, was only a vulgar chimpanzee suffering from a skin disease. C’est un immeuble parisien où sont mélangés des références à un film d’épouvante “Double assassinat rue Morgue” (1932) adapté d’une nouvelle d’Edgar A.Poe (il y a un portrait de lui au 3ème étage) et l’histoire triste mais vraie de Zizi Bamboula. Etait-ce un homme? était-ce un singe ? C’est ce que se demandait la population parisienne en septembre 1908 en le voyant rapporté de l’île de Bornéo. Il fut présenté comme “un homme singe né d’une négresse et d’un gorille”. Il n’avait pas de poil et ressemblait à un homme. Il suscita la polémique dans les journaux du monde entier. Le monde des savants était en émoi… jusqu’au moment ou des naturalistes déclarèrent que l’infortuné Zizi Bamboula, loin d’affirmer certaines théories nauséabondes sur l’évolution, n’était qu’un vulgaire chimpanzé souffrant d’une maladie de peau.

: A low cost housing and a Mcdonald’s suggest that bad housing and junk food go together. Un HLM et un McDo, quand mal logement rime avec mal bouffe.

: From far it’s a building that seems liberate of the city. Closer it’s an unsafe building with African immigrants full of hope. It’s a metaphor of their odyssey and take a particular echo with the tragedy in the Mediterranean sea. De loin, elle semble paisible, libérée de la ville. En s’approchant on découvre des migrants africains. Le coeur plein d’espoir et d’illusion, ils voguent vers un immeuble parisien aussi insalubre et surpeuplé que leur embarcation. C’est une métaphore de leur odyssée et prend un écho particulier avec la tragédie syrienne en mer Méditerranée.

: n the depths surburb of Paris, this cheap hotel, along a railway seems inspired by pre-war movies by Marcel Carné and Alexandre Trauner film sets. A huge graff shows Serge Gainsbourg, a very famous and subversive french poet-singer. He might be able to tell the story of the girl of the 3rd floor. Dans les profondeurs des faubourgs parisien le long d’un chemin de fer, ce petit hôtel pas cher, semble inspiré par les films d’avant-guerre de Marcel Carné et les fabuleux décors d’Alexandre Trauner. Un énorme graff montre Serge Gainsbourg, célèbre et subversif, poète, auteur et chanteur français. Il aurait peut-être pu raconter l’histoire la fille du 3e étage.

: If you look closely, you’ll see that this Petit Journal is hiding a doll workshop. Si vous regardez attentivement, vous verrez que ce Petit Journal cache un atelier de poupée.

: Or how to peep as a peeping tom Ou comment mater un mateur.

: Or how to peep as a peeping tom Ou comment mater un mateur.

: Every piece of wallpaper tells a life. By taking a closer look, we perceive tracks of human presences, bed, crucifix, night table that the time printed like a photographic paper. Here we are a little the archaeologist of the life of others. Chaque morceau de papier peint raconte une vie. En regardant de plus près, nous percevons des traces de présence humaine, lit, crucifix, table de nuit que le temps a imprimé comme un papier photographique. Ici, nous sommes un peu l’archéologue de la vie des autres.

: From afar, it’s a quite and innocent atmosphere with a kid playing with a balloon. This is a wink to the Red Balloon, a 1956 fantasy featurette directed by french filmmaker Albert Lamorisse. The thirty-four-minute short, which follows the adventures of a young boy who one day finds a sentient, mute, red balloon, was filmed in the Menilmontant neighbourhood of Paris. Closer, on the old facade of this cheap hotel where you can rent a room for a month or a day, above the empty location of a stolen street plate, there is a small inscription “Long live the Commune”. It refers to the events of 1871 that bloodied the area up in the cemetery of Pere Lachaise. Historically, this district of Paris is politically socialist and communist. On the roof, there are some graffitis as a portrait of Big Brother, a fictional character and dictator in George Orwell’s novel 1984. The graffiti with Chuck Norris could see as a symbol of an American imperialism and a Space Invaders by french artist Invaders as a virus. De loin, l’atmosphère est calme et innocente, à la fenêtre, un enfant joue avec un ballon. C’est un clin d’oeil au film le Ballon Rouge du cinéaste français Albert Lamorisse. Ce court métrage poétique suit les aventures d’un jeune garçon qui un jour trouve un ballon sensible, muet et rouge. Il a été filmé dans les rues de Belleville et Ménilmontant en 1956. En regardant de plus près, sur la vieille façade de cet hôtel bon marché où l’on peut louer une chambre au mois ou à la journée, au-dessus de l’emplacement vide de la plaque de rue, il y a une petite inscription “Vive la Commune”. Il renvoie aux événements de 1871 qui ensanglantèrent le quartier jusque dans le cimetière du Père Lachaise. Historiquement, ce quartier de Paris est politiquement socialiste et communiste comme le suggère sur le toit un portrait de Big Brother, le dictateur du roman de George Orwell 1984. Le graffiti avec Chuck Norris pourrait symboliser l’impérialisme américain et les Space Invaders de l’artiste français Invaders, un virus.

: Inspired by the oldest erotic cinema in Pigalle. Inspiré par le plus ancien cinéma érotique de Pigalle.

: Formerly, inns and antique relay of post offering the stable to the tired rider and his horse. The first ones who proposed rooms indicated it by mentioning “Au lit on dort”, it means “In bed we sleep”. In french “Au lit on dort” and “Au lion d’or” are phonetically similar. The contraction of the word made it lose its sense. During the years, the expression deformed and was replaced by “lion of gold”. Now, this hotel seems uninhabited for a long time, nevertheless by looking closer, at one of the windows, there is someone… or something. Jadis, les auberges et relais de poste n’offraient au cavalier fatigué et sa monture, que l’écurie. Les premiers qui proposèrent des chambres l’indiquaient en mentionnant “Au lit on dort”. La contraction du mot lui fit perdre son sens. Au cours des années, l’expression s’est déformée et on l’a remplacée par “au Lion d’Or”. A l’époque, la plupart des personnes étant illettrées, pour représenter une auberge, un dessin de “lion en or” était affiché. Cet hôtel semble maintenant inhabité depuis longtemps, pourtant en regardant de plus près, à l’une des fenêtres il y a quelqu’un… où quelque chose.