Tuesday 17 January 2006.

In Jocelyn's studio, a little factory near Le Mail. He has filled the wood stove. It's nice and warm. We talk about the work he's doing at the moment under the 1%-for-art rule, a commission for a cultural centre in Dinan rehabilitated by the architect by the architect David Cras. We decide to put this diary online. We mention – barely – the exhibition next year. He is more urgently concerned with the coming months, in feeding the site, and his coming trips. Spain, Portugal. The question of how long he'll stay. Marcel Dinahet, who has an artist's residency at Abbadia, in the French Basque country, should join him in San Sebastian or Bilbao. He knows the big Basque city well, having stayed there several times and done projects with Franck Larcade and also Jérôme Delormas. He himself invited the artists Azier Perez and Jon Mickael Euba to Rennes for an exhibition at the FRAC gallery at the TNB. I remember talking with Jon Mickael about the question of identity politics (plenty to say there about the Basques and Bretons) and the way in which nationalists, both there and here, try to instrumentalise art and artists.

We have been talking for an hour or two when Jocelyn shows me what Sébastien (Vonier) suggested to him. It's a tall four-legged table, in pale wood, quite nicely drawn, with solid wooden legs and veneer on the top. This top is divided in two by a kind of subtly sinuous frontier materialised by an inlay of brown wood. The technique reminds me of some early works by Hubert Duprat. The technique only, otherwise it's quite different. This is an arm-wrestling table. Jocelyn and I take up position and mock-wrestle. Just pretending. He's stronger than me, that's clear. I really like the piece. The object, first of all, but also its geopolitical dimension, which is established subtly and humorously, but established nevertheless. It's a Vonier, that's for sure, but it's also a rather fitting contribution to the overall project. A few years ago, I was involved (on the words side) in a piece with images by Ron Haselden and Marcel Dinahet. That was also about frontiers, about both peace and the madness of frontiers. We called it Borderline . I don't know how Jocelyn is going to use Sébastien's table, but that's one of the issues in this undertaking, and no doubt of Jocelyn's work in general.

Jean-Marc Huitorel