The commission

The association “Les Maisons des Enfants de la Côte d'Opale” manages several children’s homes sites in the Boulogne area, providing boarding facilities for children and young adults placed under court protection order. Beyond the diversity of the individual cases, the children share a common trait: great difficulty in dealing with the long term, whether retrospective (remembering) or prospective (imagining themselves becoming other).

On 2 July 2010, the day of the association's annual meeting, “Le petit déjeuner sous l'herbe” (Breakfast on the Grass), inspired by the artist Daniel Spoerri's “Déjeuner sous l'herbe” (1983), took place at “La Ferme de Bertinghen” in Saint-Martin-Boulogne. The event, conceived with an archaeologist, consisted in suggesting that the children and adults bury in a pit in the garden of the boarding facilities, personal objects which they entrust to the scientists of future decades. Excavations are planned for 2 July 2030 and 2050.

In order to maximise the likelihood that these archaeological excavations will actually take place, the MECOP team wanted to commission a work of art on the site of the “petit déjeuner sous l'herbe”. The work was to appear in the visual landscape, so that the archaeological site has its counterpart above ground.

The artwork

Maki Suzuki, a member of the artists' and designers' collective åbäke, led workshops and a film club with the children to discuss their future. These moments of sharing led to the creation of a composite work composed of a concrete monument engraved with children's drawings and various symbolic markers on the Bertinghen Farm site (flags, the date 2050 written with the tiles on the roof of a building, eco-cups on which projections for 2050 are inscribed...).

The final work is not only material because a real ritual for the day of 2 July has been created collectively. Each year, the children and adults of MECOP perpetuate new traditions in anticipation of the excavations of 2030 and 2050. The notion of ritual is particularly meaningful for the association in the need to create continuity despite the frequent departures and arrivals of children. The ritual enables them to project themselves into a serene collective future.

The artist

Patrick Lacey, Kajsa Stahl, Benjamin Reichen and Maki Suzuki, Åbäke is a collective with multiple activities. Graphic designers, DJs, painters, photographers, curators or teachers, they design editions, furniture, installations in art galleries or for the public space. Their projects often involve collaborations with people outside the collective.