Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre have captured the concepts of permanence and impermanence within the theme of their art. Old factories, office buildings, and theatres fill the pages of Yves and Romain’s work; however, it is the immortalization of past generations and societies that prompted these two artists to focus directly on this theme. The aesthetic care which was taken in constructing these buildings provides historical documentation of the pride felt in one’s work, while also serving as a lens that peeks into the world of past generations.
First, I’d like to start by thanking you for your time. On the homepage of your website, you make a brief commentary on the state of ruins in Detroit—that it provides a “wondering about the permanence of things.” Is this something you find in all aspects of life (i.e.relationships, careers, hobbies, etc…) or just in the collective efforts of human beings trying to establish a society?
M&M: Permanence is a human concept. We think there is no such a difference between the individual behaviour and the making of a civilization. They’re both intimately related, there is just a difference of scale. Looking at someone is looking to the whole humanity.
Ruins are the end of ideas; whereas ideas are immaterial, ruins appear like the best metaphor we can not just look at, but even being physically touched and felt.
But as it’s nothing of a life form, ruins could also be conserved as the ideas they materialize or reuse, unlike us, except for what we leave behind: our creations and ideas. In our human scale, buildings, the arts, history, and objects we produce are the only things which have the appearance of permanence. Looking at ruins seems to prove the opposite.
What, ultimately, do you believe leads to this impermanence of things?
M&M: It makes us wonder about permanence, but it doesn’t mean there is no permanence. We, humans and civilization, are just small moving and impermanent pieces of a larger and permanent cycle, nature itself.
Human beings—our vanity—creates the idea of permanence or at least tries to redefine permanence. By all means, we try to make permanence become our own; thus, becoming ourselves, we try to achieve immortality by creating, possessing, and consuming (like in capturing an image, for example). We are struggling against our own emptiness of being, and insecure, because all around us proves that there is moving, changing, vanishing and regenerating.
Finding beauty in destruction is a wonderful paradox offered in countless works of art. Hieronymus Bosch depicts humanity succumbing to sinful earthly pleasures in "The Garden of Earthly Delights, while W.B. Yeats states, “A terrible beauty is born” in his “Easter 1916” poem, which is a lamentation about the Easter rising in Ireland against the British. Understanding this statement to mean that a death must occur for true beauty to shine, do you find a particular sense of beauty in the death or demise of certain of eras or civilizations?
M&M: Progress, or at least the illusion of progress, provokes demolition and destruction of beliefs, illusion. Because it’s in materialized form, we can only notice what is finished, not what is going to happen. As soon as time passes by it remains a souvenir, which is above all just an idea. It sadly underlines our inability (or impossibility?) to enjoy the absurd present—preferring to look back or hope for something to come.
Ruins allow you to look at our past, present and future together: to look at our own condition. Maybe the present could truly be lived if one achieves the exact consciousness of one’s past and so on, thus one’s future.
What are the positive and negative aspects of these deaths?
M&M: There is no good or positive aspect for which we can judge. This makes relevant the fact that not any civilization has been able to identify what’s reasonable and what’s not reasonable. And not any death would ever give us a definitive lesson on this statement.
The only things that are not dying are ideas. The real death occurs when there is no way to recover these ideas. While a human being is disappearing, ideas are passing on. They are the only things that remain infinite.
A lot of times, we don’t acknowledge the existence of things—appreciate them, that is— until they’re gone, and we think back about them. The only things you remember are the ideas, in which things are creating for us. This consciousness is the only valuable heritage we get.
In “The Ruins of Detroit,” you comment about the city’s past stating, “Nowadays, its splendid decaying monuments are no less than the Pyramids of Egypt, the Coliseum of Rome, or the Acropolis in Athens, remnants of the passing of a great civilization.” While these buildings offer historical evidence of a booming city and your photojournalistic documentation immortalizes this history, what should the city do with all of these abandoned buildings?
M&M: They should accept it for sure. Camilo Jose Vergara, whose work since the 80’s on the same subject, proposed to turn Detroit and its downtown into a museum of ruins, which it already is in fact. It’s provocative and interesting. The cities are, by definition, a perpetual evolution, which consist in not denying the past but using it.
The most interesting cities build their new monuments using the remains of their past, taking into account the old adage that those who forget the past are doomed to make the same mistakes again. That’s what is happening in Detroit. People are no longer acknowledging the difference between their consumerism habits and their city, their heritage.
Understanding what marvellous buildings the theatres are, how do you feel about them being “reused as churches, retail, flea markets, bingo halls, discos, supermarkets or warehouses?” Is there a specific message you’re trying to convey about society with your emphasis on theaters, considering that they are homes for art and culture?
M&M: Indeed, theatres are the reflection of art, culture and creation. It’s an irony to see these places of fantasy and dream invaded by the most typical beliefs of our modern society. In a very general way, we think this is something primarily related to the end of innocence.
The architecture of these theaters was a mosaic of different cultures and ideas. We try to accept the univited elements as part of the decor. It became a hybrid creature, a bond between our past consciences and actual condition.
Do you feel there is a specific contradiction between the mindless labor occurring in factories and the points you bring up in your statement, “During the industrial revolution, factories were built with a great aesthetic concern since they were used to promote the image of companies?”
M&M: This statement is particularly relevant to the factories built at the beginning of the 20th Century. Factories of the modern era like those of the assembly lines in Detroit were never built with a great concern for beauty, but in a more conceptual and in a rationalized way (which most of the time have nothing to do with the reasonable way).
That was one of the major changes in architecture. After thousands of years, people began to abandon the idea of expression in their monuments and houses. With the emergence of media in the 1920’s, press and radio, then television in the 1950’s, modern marketing appeared and spread out all over the word. No need anymore to make referencial and expressive buildings.
The creation slides away to other domains and architecture, becoming isolated from the other arts. In the United States during the 1920’s began the very end of the demonstrative, over-referential, and humanist architecture with the good and bad aspects of these notions. To us it was really the last profusion of delusional architecture.
More largely, that’s an interesting and debatable question; it raises the eternal paradox between what we consider as monuments and the ideas, system and civilization, which made them edified. They were all built with strong beliefs and confidence, always with a touch of megalomania or in a blindness spirit of devotion.
France has very good examples with Versailles, all the great Renaissance castles, which demonstrate the domination of a few, and before with the great cathedrals that emphasize religious power. None of these buildings reflect a reasonable mind, same as the factories.
These buildings were made by powerful forces, which do not suppress the creative aspect, and that’s what could be surprising: the reinforcing of creativity. Art and creativity are probably the most selfish expressions, as money is often required to create the pieces of art. We are coming back to vanity once again.
And finally, that’s what we like: people coming to Paris to enjoy it, because all those different creative forces, good and bad, create a certain human feeling of beauty. Beauty has something related to the conscience of ourselves, so of our world.
Choosing which photos to display with this article was a tough decision because there are so many more brilliant photographs in their portfolio. Check out more of their work at marchandmeffre.com
