Synopsis
Since the 90s in France, under the Vigipirate anti-terrorism plan, mobile barriers have been used in public spaces to modify and regulate their use. Originally designed for temporary public order missions, they were installed on a permanent basis in streets, squares, parks, in front of town halls, schools, religious buildings, museums, etc., to establish secure perimeters and control flows around these places. Today, they find themselves on the front line of everyday life, and at the hotspots of events, where they mark out the limits and thresholds.
A word from Tënk
Unless they disfigure the city like those set up in Quebec City during the last G7 Summit, security equipment is hardly noticeable.
In Les barrières mobiles, Eric La Casa questions the place occupied by these fences that now blend into the urban landscape. A necessary passage in Paris since the recent terrorist attacks, they are used on all occasions. To prevent or deter, and even to celebrate: "to have a party, you need a barrier; to create a queue, a perimeter."
They are both the subject and the device of his documentary: the sounds heard are the result of contact microphones placed on these so-called mobile barriers, even though there is no longer any question of doing without them. La Casa wonders what they tell us about the French capital, about real fears or those that it is in our interest to exacerbate. By making them audible, he removes them from their invisibility: they are concrete again.
With the Olympics just a few weeks away – and the repression that will come with it – this documentary resonates particularly.
Jenny Cartwright
Documentarian and audio artist
