Conversation between Michel François, Nicolas Bourthoumieux and Tamara Beheydt in the studio of Michel François, 11 March 2024. 

This conversation is quite exceptional. We have the aim to speak about Radicale1924 and Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. Nicolas, you have been there several times. However, Michel, you are invited for the project this year, but you haven’t actually visited the village yet. How did your participation come about? 

Michel François: It was Nico who told me about Radicale1924 and thought it could be interesting for me. Guillaume Bijl also spoke to me about it. I have a feeling that this is how the whole project is created, through a chain of contacts and ideas. grows gradually, right? The first time I heard about it, it seemed like a rather shy project, but now there are many people involved.

Nicolas Bourthoumieux: Yes, I believe in a way it’s a rather spontaneous project. Chantal (Yzermans) at first invited artists she knew, and then the group expanded. What I really like about this project, is that nothing is formal or regulated. It’s very open and free. 

As for myself, Chantal called me one day, because she knew my work through Hans Theys. When she told me about the project, it turned out that I grew up in a village not far from Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, about 20 km away. So, I loved the idea of doing something there. I took a little detour during holidays to check it out. It’s isolated, but I became really enthusiastic to work there. 

MF: Is it that isolated? Apparently, it’s one of the most touristic villages in the world.

NB: That’s true, but there is nothing around. You really have to go there specifically. It’s a fake village in a way, it’s like an attraction park, it’s so classified and protected that it’s empty. Which is why I understand it’s appeal for Guillaume Bijl. 

MF: I once talked to Guillaume about his work and asked him what his ambition was. He said ‘my ambition is to be classic’. And I understand it more and more, because it happens a lot, that I see a place and think ‘oh, that’s like a work by Guillaume Bijl’. He pushes absurd situations in daily life to the extreme. So, for him, this village would be the perfect scenery.

NB: It really is a décor. There are only four inhabitants I think, including Chantal. The other houses are either commercial spaces or second residencies of foreigners. You should visit it soon, maybe off-season. Right before or after the summer, the light can be so beautiful there. Or sometimes the weather changes and it turns completely grey. But off-season, it’s quite empty and still.

MF: It almost sounds like a ghost village! What is the closest city? 

NB: It’s Toulouse. But that’s still 150 km away, I think. 

MF: Oh really? That’s quite far. And the river running there…? 

NB: It’s the Lot. 

MF: And what about Breton, what is his role there? 

Breton first visited Saint-Cirq-Lapopie in 1950 and owned a house there from 1951 until his death in 1966. He mainly spent his summers there. The house was in bad condition, even back then. It was restored and opened as a museum dedicated to him and the surrealist movement last year (2023). The house is now connected to the neighboring Maison Rignault, which was the home of a collector. 

MF: And he brought a lot of other artists there? 

That is one of the foundations of Radicale1924. On the one hand it’s a refuge for artists, it’s an isolated postcard village, so it can offer a form of escapism. But on the other hand, Breton wanted to share this. He invited Man Ray, Toyen, Max Ernst, … That’s what really inspires Chantal I believe. It’s less about surrealism and more about an artist community and a chain of relations and contacts.

That’s the way it also happened with you, I believe. Nicolas, you made the contact between Chantal and Michel. How do you two know each other? 

NB: I worked with Michel while I was a student at La Cambre. I saw his show at SMAK. Someone who worked for Michel at the time, was a jury member during one of my exams. I thought he didn’t like my work, but it turned out that he told Michel about me. So, Michel asked me to come visit him to get to know each other, and bring some beers.

MF: And we are still good friends. 

Nicolas, you have been to Saint-Cirq-Lapopie several times. What works did you, or will you, create there?

NB: The works that I create for Radicale1924 go back to an idea I had before. In 2018, I knew the 50th anniversary of the moon landing was approaching. I wanted to work around that. For very long I’ve had a photograph of the third man who was on the mission, the astronaut who did not step on the moon. His name is Michael Collins. He fascinated me, because he was literally in the shadows, he disappeared from history so that the mission could succeed and he is forgotten. This fact, to consciously not be part of history, fascinated me. On that moment, he was the loneliest man in the universe. He was not on earth, and his colleagues were putting the first steps on the moon. He was alone in-between, in space. However, when you hear him in interviews, he clearly didn’t mind. He didn’t have any metaphysical crisis at all. I wanted to work around him. I had the idea to cast his foot, because he is the first man to not have walked on the moon. He is symbolically the last earthling to move his feet before we become an alien species. I tried to get in touch with him but then he passed away. 

When Chantal invited me, I wanted to pick up this project again. The first idea was to make a cast of Collins’ foot, in bronze, and to bury it. That was now impossible, but I turned what was supposed to be the result of a project, to the start of something. I made a cast of my own foot with a sock with a hole in it, and buried it in the garden of Maison Routier. The house is built against a hill and the garden is actually higher than the house and is one of the highest points of the village. It gives you this magnificent, famously picturesque look over the valley.

And what will you show in the exhibition this year? 

NB: I think I will show a new video installation at Maisons Daura, another artist house in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, which is somehow connected to an arts center in Cajarc, a nearby village. It will most probably be on several screens. Maybe I will also include some objects. I’m not sure about the final form yet. 

I saw a link between Michael Collins and the caves of Pech Merle, where there is a footprint in the earth of approx. 25.000 years old. I visited this cave when I was a child and the guide asked me my age and said, “see this footprint was left by someone your age, but 25.000 years ago.” That stayed with me. I saw a connection between this foot that had not walked on the moon and the foot that was maybe one of the first on earth. It’s a trace, whereas Collins didn’t leave any. 

There are three main points in the film: Michael Collins, the caves, and I would like to include the two paintings about the fall of Icarus by Breugel. This is also about a double image. The only part we see of Icarus is his feet. He’s already in the water, but it’s clear that he comes from the sky. 

I included Hans Theys in the film in the cave because my participation in this project came about through his network. And he makes these videos with his phone when he visits artist studios, showing the artistic process. I thought it would be interesting to reproduce this in the caves. However, we weren’t allowed to film for very long inside the caves. There were a lot of restrictions and a lot of administration. Hans brought his daughter, who now plays a role in the film, visiting the footprint. 

Michel, what about you? If I understood correctly, Nicolas thought of one of your works to show at Saint-Cirq-Lapopie? 

NB: When Chantal asked me about you, and thinking about the village which is constructed on a hill, I thought about your work, the rope connecting several locations. 

MF: Yes, it’s an existing work, that can be reactivated. It’s simply a rope spanning a great distance. It would be nice to span it over the river. I did this before over the river Tarn river, during a project in a village with mills. On the other side of the river, there’s a city. The ball of rope is an object in itself, a sculpture, but with the potentiality of it’s gradual desappearance. At some point, the ball disappears, and at the end there is only a floating rope stays visible. The spectator arrives too late in a sense. You can only imagine how this distance has been covered, you did not witness it. 

Would you say there are some surrealist aspects in your works or practices?

MF: You know, surrealism… There are a lot of movements in art history. Historians identify a starting point and an ending point. But when it comes to surrealism, the project stays open. I mean, people continue to dream, to be interested in psychoanalysis, in the subconscious, in coincidence. So, I think it would be an error to fix surrealism only to a certain part of history. Working with the subconscious is still vivid. Of course, there is a subconscious element in my work. There are other artists who really focus on it, and that’s different. But I would say every artist uses the subconscious in one of another. I wouldn’t say there is “surrealism” in my practice, I would rather called it forces of life, simply. Breton named it surrealism. There are other terms possible.

NB: What interests me, is that surrealism appeared around the same time as quantum mechanics. In my work, I am less interested in surrealism and more in quantum physics and metaphysics. But both have something to do with searching for the meaning and truth of our lived reality. It has to do with wanting to create a parallel reality, with not being satisfied with what is handed to us and with searching for what is not readily seen in life. I think more of this, rather than seeing any direct link with surrealism in my practice. Also, I believe Radicale1924 builds less on surrealism, and more on the topography of the village itself. That’s where my focus is, throughout the several works that evolved there.