The research project TOURNER LA PAGE by Joséphine Kaeppelin accompanied by artconnexion focused on the concept of work: an investigation based on archives.

“In my practice, I question what we do in life and how we do it. I explore the relationship a person has with their activity. I am particularly interested in the ways of saying, of naming what one does.

In order to work and carry out my research, I self-assigned the status of intellectual and graphic service provider in early 2017. As such, I intervene within not-for-profit organisations, institutions or private companies and carry out audits. These missions allow me to go into the field, to meet people and to discover a wide variety of languages.

A few months ago, I began a research phase based not on the direct testimony of individuals (as in audits), but on indirect testimony.

For the research project entitled TURNING THE PAGE, I decided to set up my office at the Archives Nationales du Monde du Travail (ANMT) (National work archives) in Roubaix. In consulting the archives, I discovered written, reported and documented words.

Conceived as a project of reading and collecting words and ways of saying, the mission enabled me to understand the working worlds of yesterday, in order to better understand those of today and tomorrow. I was able to grasp what is commonly understood behind the word 'work'? What is archived and therefore considered as “work” by the National Archives? How can we shift this generally accepted slide? How can we challenge it, complete it? What place do women have in these archives?

I see this mission as an investigation, a quest”. Joséphine Kaeppelin. Date ?

TEMPLATES

TEMPLATES is the result of Joséphine Kaeppelin's research project TOURNER LA PAGE. This project is a set of 13 work coats whose designs were conceived (among other things) from documents consulted at the Archives Nationales du Monde du Travail in Roubaix. Inventory of factory equipment, meeting minutes, claims booklet, information file, safeguard plan, letters, handwritten notes, company magazine, job descriptions, annual survey, brochure, leaflets, communication campaigns, Joséphine Kaeppelin has noted in these archives the ways of saying what we do. Joséphine Kaeppelin presented the TEMPLATES project at the Festival des Antipodes in Bataville in August 2020.

List of the 13 TEMPLATES

TEMPLATE #01 ( before anything else )

TEMPLATE #02 ( career development )

TEMPLATE #03 ( whistle blowing )

TEMPLATE #04 ( the children had a bath )

TEMPLATE #05 ( mineral syndrome of declining systems )

TEMPLATE #06 ( milk surge )

TEMPLATE #07 ( the job is for a nervous person )

TEMPLATE #08 ( cost-cutting market growth )

TEMPLATE #09 ( it comes back like radishes )

TEMPLATE #10 ( there is a piece of scrap metal that bends upwards )

TEMPLATE #11 ( no vacancies )

TEMPLATE #12 ( ripping the film off is what I recommend )

TEMPLATE #13 ( but I was suffocating, I needed life )