The association Les Plastiqueurs GIMU / Groupe d'Intervention en Milieu Urbain was founded in 1997 by a group of artists and technicians from the entertainment industry. Now based in Canteleu, France, in a farm called Ferme des deux lions, the team is made up of artists, architects, graphic artists, metalworkers, carpenters and designers, as well as many volunteers who contribute to the projects and life of the association. Origine is run by two of its members, Fabrice Deperrois (artistic director - set designer), and Pauline Thebault (set designer assistant, graphic designer, production designer and technician).
Their preferred sectors: scenography in the public space, museography, cultural action with practical art workshops, and finally live performance.
Their watchword: to take over the public space and transform its reality through in situ plastic creations, most often based on the recycling and repurposed objects. To create meaningful projects, the team works with local organizations to co-write local projects that combine design and production.
Over the past 25 years, Les Plastiqueurs have acquired an expertise recognized by many partners, and a large public in Normandy knows them for their scenographic creations for the Viva Cité street arts festival (Sotteville-lès-Rouen, France). The team also carries out projects on a national, European and international scale (Switzerland, Burkina Faso, Sri Lanka, the Czech Republic).
By its very nature, the forest environment gives rise to a multitude of interactions, sensations and emotions for humans. We have a long-standing familiarity with nature, it is a refuge from our weariness, a resource in our stressful urban lives, but also a place for adventure, discovery and family fun.
Yet, how do we approach this space? How do we dare to get lost? How do we let the night surprise us without succumbing to our ancestral fears?
Origine is a playful, kinetic visual and sculptural experience that explores the forest and its landscape. The ovoid monolith rests delicately on the ground, almost levitating, like a technological object with mysterious functions, visibly disconnected from nature. Visitors are invited to touch it and rotate it on its axis.
Through its reflective surfaces, the artwork captures the entirety of the surrounding landscape and offers a new, fragmented and poetic interpretation. Like a disco ball, it reflects the sunlight through each of its one hundred and fifty faces, creating as many bright points on the surfaces of the site. This, combined with the rotating movement, produces a vortex effect.
The reflected environment also changes with the movements of the visitors, expressing their belonging to this nature and this forest.