A house affected by climate change

explorations

A house affected by climate change
Béatrice Darmagnac

Featured in Nouvelles saisons, self-portraits of a territory, “La Fabrique des lieux,” a work by Béatrice and Arnaud Darmagnac, does not reveal itself immediately. A torn kraft paper map marked with architectural elements and textual cues, a clay cuboid whose yellow hue echoes the brown of the cardboard, a few wooden models. While the accompanying text emphasizes that the two artists consider themselves climate refugees, it is through the full account of the past four years spent in their house-laboratory in Rafin (Gers) that we come to understand the universal significance of their unique experience.

Béatrice Darmagnac shares her experience of life in their home with her partner and family in all its dimensions—architectural, technical, landscape-related, memorial, and emotional. She confronts us with a way of “living” that brings to mind philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space. Her multi-voiced narrative intertwines the artists’ daily lives with those of their domestic space. Gradually, we feel trapped in a disaster movie scenario. Fear gives way to anger; creation and struggle intertwine. Human relationships oscillate between low blows and solidarity. The artists manage to seize upon this house—which contracts and retracts into its ground, destabilized by climate change—as an object of research and mise en abîme. The text (In French) explores the various languages that weave together this narrative: fragments of ordinary life, portmanteau words and neologisms to express the unthinkable, and the cold terminology of the legal system. Gradually, the singular story transforms into a universal narrative: what happens to the occupants of this house may await us all and raises a crucial question: what do we inherit? Do the landscape or childhood memories take precedence over market value? · Fanny Léglise

Béatrice Darmagnac

Béatrice Darmagnac is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in southwestern France. Since 2022, in the wild laboratory they created with the studio_df_artdesign collective, they have been experimenting and building an ecosystem site. This place serves as a gathering point for past works, upcycled materials, the results of site analyses conducted since 2010 on various residential plots, and, above all, the ongoing research project.