Big Shit

IN COLLABORATION WITH PIERRE LIEBAERT Highways exist neither in time nor in space. they are in between. They links things that matter and the real stakes of our lives; they are nothing, if not a means where humanity is put into parenthesis, where bodies fly at superhuman speeds, where encounters between individuals are formal and without seduction. On this axis, we come across one-another, we catch one-another and we overtake one-another without politeness, lured by the gain of time, the one that counts. Only primary life remains; we please our organisms like our vehicules, thanks to welcoming structures offering toilets, french fries and plastical hotels. Highways are these marginal segments, which, freed from our usual societal constraints, enables anonymity, simple life, and sometimes a bit of bestial sex in the woods. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Big Shit is a photographic work characterized by a one-sided tenor, a derisible tone and a unique interpretation. It is the product of a painful immersion within the highway world ; practically, we live at the edges of this nugatory axis, we eat, we drink, we sleep, we defecate « highway ». As to « Big Shit », the title sets the tone. Referential in several respects, it first of all evoques this filter that fouls our sight when capturing highway rest areas on camera. Of what’s before our eyes, all that’s left is a depressing, disgusting, sad and hostile place. Moreover, Big Shit suggests what we believe to be the main function of highway rest areas : the satiation of our primary needs, a prosaic role taken upon ideal infrastructures offering toilets, plastic hotels and fries. To some extent, once engaged onto this axis, only humanity’s needs remain, to the detriment of its values and envies.