Sabine always picks up her mail when she gets home from work for her lunch break. This Monday in April 2023, she quietly opens a letter over hot tea. Stamp “general directorate of territorial cohesion”, the letter announces that she must leave her apartment at the end of the month: her street, located in 16e arrondissement, in Paris, is on the route of a future 1,400 kilometer oil pipeline linking Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, to Fos-sur-Mer, near Marseille.
In a context of tensions on the energy markets, this project called Wecop must transport black gold from the North Sea to the Mediterranean to guarantee Europeans a brand new energy independence. “A pipeline will cross France? I’m amazed, I’ve never heard of it! Being expropriated, all the same…”
Same astonishment on rue d’Endoume, in Marseille, when Dabiha, a retired nurse, receives the same mail. She calls the number at the bottom of the letter. On the other end of the line, a young woman confirms that she must leave. ” Ah good ? I said to myself, I was going to gather my furniture and go wherever I was told to go”…
Laughter despite everything
M The magazine of the World chose laughter as a common thread for its end-of-year issue. In thirteen episodes, find these portraits, reports or investigations on the power of humor.
Episode 1 : Mohammed Amer, once upon a time there was a Palestinian in America
Episode 2: Blanche Gardin, the comedians after her
Episode 3: Waly Dia, fine blade of political sleight of hand
Episode 4: Grandpamini, the art of the satirical cover
Episode 5: Bassem Youssef, a scathing irony on the Israel-Hamas conflict
Episode 6: In Israel, comedians answer the call
Episode 7: Chinese comedians don’t mess around with censorship
Episode 8: In Quebec, inclusive humor can be learned
Episode 9: You asked for Pierre The Police, don’t quit
Episode 10: “I was explaining to them that when I met you, you were the biggest petomane in France”
Episode 11: Humor would no longer be what it was or the myth of “it was better before”
Episode 12: In Ukraine, laughter as a bulletproof vest
Episode 13: Joke to alert, the new mode of action of environmental activists
Philippe works in the roads department of a district town hall in Paris. That same day, an agent informed him of markings on the ground with fluorescent spray paint, but also of posters posted on bus shelters announcing work and street closures. “Everything related to the work usually goes through our department. Given the scale of the device, I wondered what it was all about. »
Three thousand expropriation letters sent
The matter seemed serious. She is not. Each in their own way, Sabine, Dabiha and Philippe (they did not wish to give their names) found themselves embroiled in a geographical dystopia, a giant hoax according to which an oil pipeline was going to cross Brussels, Rouen, Paris, Lyon, Grenoble or Marseille . In each of these cities, an imaginary route has cracked the most affluent neighborhoods. Around three thousand expropriation letters were sent, causing a bit of panic.
Chillingly realistic for some, hilarious for others, this “artivist” gesture (a contraction of “artistic” and “activist”) wanted to bring the experience into the skin, the head or the heart of the recipients. of the dislocation actually experienced by tens of thousands of people in Uganda and Tanzania because of Total’s real Eacop oil pipeline.
From the end of 2022, international environmentalists are racking their brains to mobilize “with creativity and commitment” around this project. Members of the young collective Le bruit qui cours, twenty-somethings Julie Pasquet, Ulysse Vassas and Magalie Biard – former students in political science, engineering or cinema – have several years of activism in favor of the climate.
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