I’m Professor of French and Comparative Studies at the University of London Institute in Paris and a founding member of Quartiers Solidaires and its associated collective Les P’tits Déjs Solidaires, which have been organising for a while now through food distributions, dance projects, a micro art book collection and a macro carnival, amongst other initiatives.
These two aspects of my life meet in La Chapelle, behind one of the largest stations in the world, and a traditional entry and dispatch point in the north of Paris.
And broadly speaking, my writing also sits at an intersection between cultural production, notably contemporary writing, and urban history. In recent years it has taken a particular interest in how dissident collectives sustain their efforts in the city. Recent writing has also focused on landscape, on solidarity and duties versus rights, on complex built forms in the era of brutalist architecture. I try to cultivate this space as an urban garden of sorts in the hope that people will pass by and maybe stick around.