Paris (AFP)

They challenge on their way and come out of the walls of their silence: militant collages are multiplying in Paris, brought up to date by feminists and now taken up for other causes with the same objective, to reach the greatest number.

"Patriarchy kills", "We don't want to count our dead anymore" ... In the streets of the capital, it's hard to miss feminist collages, these capital letters assembled to each other in Scrabble style.

The goal is "to invade the street and get out of social networks, because on networks we target a part of the population who already feels concerned. In the street, we reach everyone, all neighborhoods", says Marguerite Stern, a 28-year-old young woman behind the collages against feminicides, which began in late August 2019.

This mode of expression is not new. Protestant posters were already pasted during the French Revolution and even in the 16th century, under François 1er.

For feminists, the process is simple, even artisanal. A4 sheet, paint and glue and "a strong and recognizable aesthetic in the public space". "It is above all a tool for struggle that everyone can use," added the young podcast author and former Femen.

And that's what happened. For several weeks, hospital staff from four Parisian establishments have adopted the same technique to denounce the decrepitude of the public health system.

"State alert kills the hosto", "Despised caregivers, sacrificed hospital", "Silence the hospital dies", can we read in areas located mainly in the south and east of Paris.

"We were directly inspired by feminist collages", assumes Matthieu Lafaurie, infectiologist at St Louis Hospital and behind the first collages, with one of his colleagues.

At the public hospital, "we have long relied on the dedication of caregivers to make it work. I am very happy that we are finally coming out of silence and that we are finally occupying this space", explains Myriam, a young biologist of 28 years , behind the Instagram account "Collage_hopitalpublic"

"A message in the street does not have the same impact. In the street, we touch everyone," she rejoices, describing a "cathartic feeling" at the time of the collage.

- "First social network" -

These messages then meet a second echo, thanks to the "amplifying effect" of social networks, where they are abundantly taken up, notes Sébastien Marchal, member of Formes des Luttes, a collective of graphic designers producing posters and stickers to stick on the walls, to denounce the controversial pension reform.

Since December, we find their images everywhere. Nearly 250,000 stickers rich with 72 different visuals were distributed during the various events.

Collages can also be a memory instrument. At the end of January, nearly 1,500 posters were affixed to the doors of buildings in memory of the Jewish children of the capital deported during the Holocaust, on the initiative of the UEJF. For Noémie Madar, its president, sticking "gives a form of reality".

Dysturb, a group of photojournalists, uses collage to mix artistic work and quantified information on crucial subjects, such as the climate. Pierre Terdjmann, its co-founder, considers the street as "the first social network" that it is important to exploit and thus "counter the instantaneity of social networks".

For Professor Jacques Walter, director of the Center for Research on Mediation at the University of Lorraine, "the reappropriation of this civic gesture seems a little surprising" in the age of new technologies.

"What is striking is the artisanal side of the process which contrasts with social networks" in particular "in the era of the industrialization of the message of which social networks are the advanced point. Here, we are exactly the opposite ".

But the singularity of these collages makes "event", explains the academic. "They are a most present time marker. Ephemeral, destructible and which nevertheless make sense."

© 2020 AFP