Repetition

Paris, November 2024.



Spray paint spills out on all sides. It reveals the writing device: a stencil, temporarily fixed to the wall by eight pieces of adhesive tape, and a black spray can. Clumsiness, haste, anger, or perhaps the desire to be imitated, indicate an easily conceived, inexpensive and mobile arrangement. In fact, the stencil was replicated elsewhere in the neighborhood, until there was nothing left but compressed gas and balls in the aerosol can, or a call to action suspended the writing, or the smell of paint and the cold precipitated the authors’ satisfaction.
“1 woman out of 2 has been assaulted”; the passer-by knows neither the source, nor the counting methodology, nor what is meant by the term “assault”. She can hardly engage in the debate, in felt-tip pen, with the handwritten statement in square brackets, “2 out of 2 unofficially”.
However, her reading of the stencil is rooted in a continuum of writings exhibited in urban space: denunciations, symbols, femmages (in French, female version of “hommage” derivated from “homme”, man; tribute in English) , reattributions and, above all, anti-femicide collages. Through the multiplication of public writing and the repetition of these involuntary readings, she measures, right on the walls, attempts to transform the social order.