Faire Lien - Making Connections
Landy France, Saint-Denis, Plaine Commune , 2019
Landy France is located right by the RER D suburban railway station in Saint-Denis, on the site of a former industrial zone where the headquarters of several major companies have taken the place of the labyrinthine old gasworks. Wedged between the railway line and motorway infrastructure, the neighbourhood is a little out of the way and lacks proper links to the rest of the Plaine Saint-Denis; it’s a place where people on their way to work cross paths with people who live there without ever properly meeting each other.
Working with GONGLE the group of artists and researchers, we responded to a number of questions posed by Plaine Commune Développement, the neighbourhood’s developer, who, as they reached the end of their mission, began to consider how to manage the public spaces and how to give the neighbourhood a strong, lively identity. As we began work on our preliminary study, we plunged into the history of La Plaine and met local stakeholders, inhabitants and employees, all keen to find a way to work together. We sat down with them to think about how daily life in Landy could be improved. We ended up making a film with 160 actor-directors and a road map for exploring and testing out future common projects.