Conceived by two French artists, the Poésie masculine installation is presented in Montpellier in the form of a black coffin 8.5 m long and 4 m high.
A dark tunnel, two walls of video screens, lustful glances, inappropriate remarks… Montpellier welcomes male poetrya street harassment simulator that allows men to experience one of the most common but most difficult types of violence against women.
Imagined during the confinement by a couple of digital artists from Montpellier, Frédéric Durieu and Nathalie Erin, associated with the Belgian advertiser Gilles de Boncourt, the device arrives for the first time in France, after having been shown in Brussels. It looks like a huge black coffin 8.5m long and 4m high, behind which hides a sophisticated technical control room. You enter it by lifting a sheet. In the dark, on the screens, the silhouettes of men appear on the left and on the right. When moving, thanks to sensors, insistent gazes follow their prey. “Approach», «I want you», «How about we go to my place?», «little whore”… The injunctions and raw words fuse. Then, a woman’s voice, more and more firm:I am your sister, I am your wife, I am your daughter, I am your mother… Stop your masculine poetry!she orders.
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The experience, which lasts exactly 5 minutes, may seem oppressive for women, to whom it may recall real-life scenes, but should serve as a revealer for men, explains one of the designers, Frédéric Durieu. At the exit, men and women are invited to share their reactions.
“One of the young men we met during the design, who confessed to having done it, explained to us that there is a kind of one-upmanship, like out of place poetry. We found it more elegant to say “Stop your masculine poetry!” rather than “Stop it, fat pig!”+. Our hidden goal is to get it into everyday language», adds the visual artist.
For a dozen days around November 25, International Day for the fight against violence against women, target groups (high school students, police officers, members of neighborhood associations, etc.) follow one another in the former town hall of Montpellier where the simulator has been installed. “Reality can be even harsher, go deeper into the exhibition, but it’s still very realistic“, estimated after the visit Zouhir Bensalem, controller at the transport company of the agglomeration (TaM). “Maybe it will trigger something in the people who reserved themselves to alert on situations and who there will take their responsibilities by saying: Stop, we don’t want that anymore“, he hopes. Her colleague Stéphanie Ballin judges that “everyone will experience the simulation with their own feelings, according to their character but also their experience“.
Recently enshrined in French law to deal with street harassment in particular, the “sexist outragemeans the fact of imposing on a personcomments or behavior with a sexual or sexist connotation“, undermining his dignity or creating a situation”intimidating, hostile or offensive“. He is considered as “worsen» when it is committed by a person abusing his authority, on a vulnerable person or even in public transport. “These are extremely fleeting behaviors: staring insistently, whisperingand fighting against them is notnot yet fully accepted“, noted during the opening of the exhibition the prosecutor of Montpellier, Fabrice Belargent.
“We will have succeeded in our mission when a woman can turn to a policeman, a gendarme, a bus conductor, to make it understood that something is happening and that the policeman will react immediately. It will take time, but I’m quite optimistic“, he added.
Visible in Montpellier until December 2, male poetry should then travel to Luxembourg. The mayor of Montpellier, Michaël Delafosse, has pledged that the simulator will return next year and has promised to praise its merits to other mayors, in particular that of Marseille.