What avenirs for the suburbs? Discovering « turfurist » imaginations – Liberation
How, at 20, think a more desirable future with lightness and joy? How to trust the future without giving up? For its second edition, the Festival Place a Tomorrow moved to Paris, at the Palais de la Porte Dorée, on Saturday June 14.
Glass towers colored in colored pencil, streets filled with trees, fairly unpublished architectural shapes. After having discovered, or rediscovered, the plural stories of the French suburbs at the museum of the history of immigration, it is after the exhibition Darling suburbs – Installed since mid-April at the Palais de la Porte Dorée – that thousands of children have recorded their aspirations on post-it for future suburbs, their dreamed suburbs. If a few wishes have already been answered in the PSG-Inter Milan match, others cannot be settled on a soccer field. In the midst of the many calls for peace in Palestine, children dream of social and material changes: « Circulating without being checked » ; « An emergency plan for the 93 public school » ; « Take advantage of public space like men » ; « See cows and sheep » or « Having happy, ambitious, dreamers, without fear of the police, the end of the month or the galleys of housing ».
“The galleys have always been the same. They are found from one district to another, from one suburb to another ”, Described Hind Ayadi, resident interior designer in Garges-lès-Gonesse (Val-d’Oise) and founder of the Espo and Creation association, before listing some of the issues experienced by young people: « School dropout, social inequalities, delinquency, systemic and uninhibited racism, unemployment and of course, police violence. » To get out of it, you have to fight twice as much and very often, imagining a future goes through an obligation. « For many young people, to succeed, you have to leave the neighborhood, continues Hind Ayadi. Coming from a suburban district today is a brake to find work, an apartment… ”
This observation, Makan Fofana made the basis of a reflection started five years ago. Then aged 27, this son of a garbage man who grew up in the Bois de l’Etang à la Verrière district (Yvelines), comes out of a depression made after a questioning of his Muslim faith, a career as a photographer and a model. He then discovers the « environment of the environment » of Jrr tolkienthe world of wizards of JK Rowling and the imaginations associated with these fictitious worlds, and « Take a slap », they are so far from his « Disenchanted district ». Coupling this discovery in his interest in the philosophical question and his reflection on the « Need to leave the suburbs to succeed », Makan Fofana then became interested in the imagination of his place of life, in the imagination of the suburbs. « Everyone has an imagination formed on the suburbs, whether we live there or not. »
« If you live in Brittany, but you watch TV and listen to rap, you have a preconception of the suburbs », recalls Makan Fofana, before defining this term as a « Life, culture, traditions, practices and margin that is not only limited to buildings ». The imagination of the suburbs, according to him, built large sets in parallel, with reports taking over commonplace at 20 hours and cultural productions highlighting the harsh reality of life in these districts marginalized by the public authorities.
« »Hatred as the miserable are great films, Note the philosopher. But maybe they locked us in a pessimistic, negative story, a little bit passive. ” Where Hind Ayadi sees a « Political activism » to tell the reality of the suburbs, « Because thirty years later hatred, It’s always the same ”, Makan Fofana wants « Re -enchant this imagination ». He wants to do it without waiting for an external author to do it. This would create « A desirable and emancipatory future »: there « Turfu suburb ».
Claiming an inspiration from Rapper Booba’s songthe « turfu » (verlan de future), « It’s a fucking future, explains Makan Fofana with a big smile. A future that is born in the suburbs, in the margins, unlike the stories that create future in the more bourgeois city next to it ”. To illustrate his conception of turfu, the imaginary philosopher does not hesitate to quote the country which has seen the birth Black Panther in the pages of Marvel comics And brought to the screen by director Ryan Coogler in 2018: Wakanda. This fictitious (science) country, combining ecology, traditions and technology perfection, is a utopia that is fully part of Afrofuturist culture. Theorized by Mark Dary in the 1990s, this artistic current was for the editor -in -chief ofUsbek and RicaBlaise Mao, Asked about France Culturea « Constellation of avant-garde and Afro-centered imaginary, which makes it possible to articulate black identity, technology and the future, and which transfigures the past into the deposit of the future. »
Drawing from « The cultural oasis » What is wakanda in popular culture, or other imaginations such as Solarpunk-positive science fiction current, where human technology and civilization fueled by renewable energies do not destroy nature, but are binded, as in the Castle in the sky of Hayao Miyazaki, Makan Fofana Dream of Turfu suburbs, « Where the inhabitants are happy and do not need to leave to be accomplished », In reverse of imaginations eyeing on collapsology or transhumanism. After having recorded his thought in the book « The suburbs of Turfu », published in 2021 at Tana editions, the writer made his concept a « Toolbox » so that each suburban resident can grasp his concept, « Open and create your imagination », pool your « turfu ». Because Makan Fofana is convinced of this, « The biggest changes are first of all dreams. »
But the opening of this imagination is not done without obstacle, Makan Fofana recognizes it and he has several times encountered the pragmatism of his interlocutors. How to think and imagine the future when you have to find a job, pay your rent or adjust the daily hassle? To deconstruct this « Socio-gray vision of the world and the suburbs » And « Manage the turfus » appear « Makan Fofana collaborated with designer Hugo Pilate to create a digital reflection space to redraw the contours of the future of the suburbs during discussion workshops and digital creation on the video game Fortnite : hypercube. Created at the Gaîté Lyrique, This laboratory has become a toolbox that Makan Fofana has broadcast in Europe And who has infused school programs like in Seine-Saint-Denis, or research institutes programs.
In 2020, Riwad Salim, a 26-year-old designer working within the Research and Innovation Institute (IRI) joined an experiment launched in anticipation of the gigantic projects planned in Seine-Saint-Denis to build the infrastructures of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games: The digital urbanities project in games. « Our goal was to support students in the design of their district in full change due to the Olympic Games », explains the designer today. For this, it is still the video game which was chosen as a means of expression of these students of eight colleges and two high schools of the 93. If Makan Fofana and Hugo Pilate had chosen the creative mode of ForniteRiwad Salim and his team rather opted for Luanti (formerly called Minetest). « It is a free and completely modifiable version of Minecraft,, describes the IRI designer. We created a game server from the IGN data from 93. ” In this map, the students were able to build the block by block their playground, a square or a public space from the Olympic village (so not yet emerging from the ground). But as Makan Fofana, Riwad Salim realized that the creativity of college students was « Blocked » in their daily life. « At first glance, they only offered kebabs, a city-stadium or a shopping center … a very capitalist imagination, recalls Riwad Salim. It is by going to seek connections with pop culture that new ideas are emerging. ”
Riwad Salim remembers a workshop organized in a high school in La Courneuve. « We had to rethink a square »he explains. After meeting with Makan Fofana – the Turfu project is a partner of the IRI program – Riwad Salim asked high school students to tell « What is the city through pop culture ». The students brought back manga photos, video game screens catches. « They understood that these imaginations are given value so they take the project seriously and emerging ideas. »
“These workshops are always organized in pairs with an architect or an urban planner, explains Yanis Ratbi, artist also working for IRI. They give project managers inspirations. ” Sometimes the digital blocks cross the screen to anchor in reality, as in the Dora Maar college in Saint-Denis. In the heart of the Olympic village, the college students participating in the workshops wanted to change the arrangement of their playground. « The boys were playing football in the middle of the courtyard, appropriated space », tells Riwad Salim. So the middle school students considered a huge tree, placed in the middle of the space. « They were inspired by palaver trees, large trees under which we sit down to discuss, tell stories in the West African tradition », specifies the designer. Finally, the architect changed his project.
Having continued the IRI project, Yanis Ratbi adds that « The creation of imaginations on Luanti Allows you to integrate reflection among young people of non -polluting materials ” And to see the emergence of structures mixing wood and recovery. Because the ecological questioning already « infusedAmong the youngest, reminds their mission both Makan Fofana and Yanis Ratbi. “Mainstream ecology just does not present their daily acts, often linked to their social condition, as being green, note the latter. It is enough to legitimize them, by fiction or politicians, so that these young people realize that they have an ecological approach. ”
Resuming Low-Tech universes As this approach best illustrates, Makan Fofana argues that the ecological future of the suburbs will not be able to happen without « Redistribution of wealth by and for ourselves ». « We must not bet only on the frame, » Ayadi Ayadi, renovating the national agency for urban renovation, before adding. You have to bet on the social. As long as our identity is not respected, that there is uninhibited racism, in the media, the police, that will not change anything. ”
The advent of « Turfu suburbs » is a long process, « A reflection on ten, twenty or thirty, concedes Makan Fofana, who calls for the creation of new stories. There is a lack of science fiction stories on the suburbs for example. ”
