C’est l’État d’Urgence (This is a State of Emergency) is a meditation on daily life in Paris under the proclaimed (and seemingly perpetual) state of emergency in France triggered by the terrorist activities in 2015. A series of public collaborative performances activate a way of seeing that is collective and individual.

Participants are guided through a two hour workshop on activating awareness in public space, and connecting that with the process of writing. For the subsequent performance, participants bring this heightened state with them in order to look the city in the eye. They sit together on wooden stools for 30 minutes and generate short texts in reflection of the normalcy of heightened political states when one is immersed in them.  

These written observations from different viewpoints generate a fragmented narrative of our shared reality.

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A gallery installation of the work brought together the texts, written in four languages with accompanying translation into english, with a sound work of the voices of the participants reading their observations, and photographs taken during the performances. Gallery participants are welcome to add to the notebooks which were placed inside and on the street outside the gallery in central Paris.