INTERVIEW
Calls, videoconferences, SMS: all means are good for contacting loved ones, distant during this period of confinement linked to the coronavirus. The city of Bordeaux has opted for an original initiative. She hired actors to broadcast messages from residents in several places in the city. Street actor Gaëtan Ranson, member of the La Flambée collective, participated in this initiative by transforming himself into a street crier, and thus becoming a relay for confined Bordeaux residents. He tells Europe 1 about this initiative, like a return to the Middle Ages, where the criers delivered essential information to local residents.
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Love letters, jokes, winks
To send a message, simply send an email to the following address: crieurspublics@bordeaux-metropole.fr. "We found that there was a lot of creation on the part of people, and it's great: poems, small texts, charades", says Gaëtan Ranson. "But obviously still very much in touch with the coronavirus, with the dark context that we can live in. We sometimes preferred to select the most motivating passages to offer an air bubble to people".
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The actors receive several types of messages, mainly winks, greetings, declarations of love or "reminders of declarations of love for people who are confined lovingly together", specifies the artist who remembers the touching love declaration of 9-year-old Adrien for his girlfriend.
The artists interpret the texts of others, sometimes funny, sometimes advertising. "A florist this week took the opportunity to remind us that she was going to deliver lily of the valley", says Gaëtan Ranson. "We enjoy living the text as if we were living it".
Breaking isolation, rethinking public space
Four pairs of actors crisscross the city, following a precise route and respecting barrier gestures. The places chosen are often buildings or outlying districts. Thus the criers help certain people, especially the elderly, to break out of isolation.
"It is felt in the applause. Some play their lives, it's really very warm thanks," laughs Gaëtan Ranson. "We go to certain districts with people who do not leave their homes at all. So, when there is an activity from the window for them it really represents a break in their day. We receive emails without messages to declaim but thank you and it's really heart-warming.
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In this period of barrier gestures, which distance us but protect us, Gaëtan Ranson hopes that artistic practices will be able to settle in the longer term in public space, to revive it. "We are going to think about finding forms which allow a little artistic life to exist after confinement."