amorous negotiations

Paris, March 2023.

We know the reasons for the distancing, blaming or denunciation of work, but we probably understand a little less well the love that can connect us to it. Not only the “real job” that emerges in a game of opposition to “dirty work” or the vocation displayed in certain professions, but the reasons why workers are attached to a place, that they take care of it, that they care about the social relationships they develop there, about the collectives that make them possible and about (at least part of) the accuracy or the beauty of what they do together.
In the Parisian studio of this Swiss radio station, the technician who welcomes us is proud to show the guestbook of people who have been on the microphone: candidate François Mitterrand and the drawing scribbled during the interview which he has carefully kept, Johnny Halliday, via our sociologist colleague Scarlett Salman. He has labeled the pages of the notebooks and keeps these archives which he would like, one day, to make an exhibition in the premises of the radio. In the premises only, because in addition to the guestbook, some guests have left indelible marker marks. His emotion is even more palpable when he moves to show them to us and comments on them with affection. Press cartoonists and cartoonists began writing on the walls of the small studio a few years ago. Zep was the first of them. He drew Titeuf’s face on the lacquered varnish coffee table.
The same evening, the appalled cleaning lady spent a lot of time scrubbing to erase this mark and apologizes for not having succeeded. The ghost of Titeuf on this white table remains the testimony of two visions of the workspace, but also of two forms of love for the studio: the love of a job well done, of tidying up and of cleanliness assuming to erase the traces, on the one hand, and on the other the love of these privileged relationships with those whose voices have been captured, of the link that has been woven with the studio and which can open up a space of discussion or even contribution for future visitors. To avoid further upsetting the housekeeper, the technician invited the next designer to prefer to write on the walls, for which she does not feel responsible.