Paris-Gonesse Project n.05 Naomi Melville, Pauline Fremaux

Naomi Melville and Pauline Fremaux studied at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Their joint practice transposes spoken and written language into the visual arts, through site-specific and scenographic works.

In their words: “At the start, before visiting the Bernard Controls site, we were curious about any vocabulary specific to factory work. We first asked people which words they used most while working, especially technical ones, without much success. We then realised that the margin between the many meanings given to some words – especially words used in personal, factory and artistic settings alike – was far more interesting. That margin might concern a word used for different objects or facts, or something subtler: shades of meaning, connotations, contexts, history – social, political, etymological.

“We met the employees, mostly one by one, sometimes on the production lines. In the first weeks the theme was open: after we introduced ourselves, people could tell us anything. Later the meetings focused on vocabulary and questions of words, which could be answered with a clear definition or with any kind of story; some were structured as series of questions, others unfolded freely, as each person preferred. Everything we gathered was written down, then organised and turned into diagrams and drawings mixing extracts of conversations, observations, quotations, our own definitions and other stories.

“Personal experience and working life constantly cross and overlap. So too in our work: the conversations blend informal, unexpected encounters with the logic of a dictionary. What we finally modelled could be called ‘language at work’ rather than ‘the language of work’.”