Outings-Leisure | Open days in Marseille: Ricard – Artagon, the idea factory
A place of Marseille heritage, the Sainte-Marthe factory was the first factory founded by Paul Ricard in the 1960s to bring together the production of his famous Pastis, a stone’s throw from his birthplace. The site, which operated until the early 1990s, was invested by the Artagon association
, which opens its doors to visitors this weekend. The industrial wasteland now hosts around fifty artists and promoters of cultural projects, who will answer all your questions about their works.Artagon is a portmanteau word formed from “art” and “agôn”, a Greek term which designates the oratorical jousting, and more broadly the fight. “The life of an artist is not easy believes Keimis Henni, co-founder of the place. We wanted to break with the myth of bohemian life: an artist is a profession, you have to learn how to structure your activity, obtain prices, find galleries, declare your income to Urssaf, a whole administrative aspect to which young art school graduates
are rarely prepared. Here, they benefit from artistic, but also legal and administrative support throughout their residency.”
“The opportunity for a local at a low price”Among them, Juliet Casella (photo below) is working on the collage of images retrieved from the Internet. “As the Dadaists drew from magazines, I collect images on the canvas“, explains Juliet, who, among other references, made a clip for the British group Metronomy. In her studio with a view of the sea and Notre Dame de la Garde, large-format canvases are inspired by these collages.” Artagon is the opportunity to occupy a studio for a very low monthly salary of 30 euros, to meet other artists, all of them sharp in their research, she testifies.It’s stimulating and it creates opportunities
.”In the former Ricard employees’ sports hall, Corentin Laplanche exhibits his work on metropolisation, a nocturnal poem written in Hangzou (China) which is written on a frosted glass plate with a projection of photos. In addition, we discover the different lives of the Osaka stadium, which hosted a baseball team, then private housing estates inside its enclosure (strange and striking image), and more recently a latest generation shopping center with gardens suspended. “It is a compendium of capitalist urbanism and the history of Japan
“, exclaims the artist.In Artagon, we also come across the 16b editions house with its caustic humour, the independent cultural mediation office (BIM), which designs guides and visits for young people, educational sheets for museums, an urban planning workshop and of architecture. This first class of residents occupies the walls for a year and a half. Proof of dynamism, two of them, the photographer Robin Plus and the storyteller HaYoung are rewarded with the South Region Prize at the contemporary art fair Art-o-rama, an event for the return to Marseille. Valentin Noujaïm landed a residency at the Médicis workshops. All present their work to visitors this weekend. “The opening of the place on the territory is an axis of Artagon
“, insists Keimis Henni.
The neighborhood teenagers and the designer Jeanne Ostorero have created T-shirts for the imaginary team of Sainte-Marthe, displayed in the lobby. Push the door of Artagon, the creative turbine factory.
the walls belong to the Epic, a group of solidarity economy structures
From 12 p.m. to 8 p.m., Artagon, Former Ricard factory, 13, bd Jean-Bouin (14th), a two-minute walk from Sainte-Marthe station (Marseille).www.artagon.org