Tuesday 7 February 2006.

To get to the Saint-Germain, an organic vegetarian restaurant (one of Jocelyn's ideas, for sure…), I go in on foot and, walking up Avenue Janvier, cross paths with the demonstration. Like a lot of people – not enough, because Villepin has cunningly decided to put his CPE project through during the Parisian school holidays, but still, like a lot of people – I am on strike. Enough of this power that has been in place since the war and continues to cheapen lives and worship dividends! I don't much like demonstrating in the street, or maybe yes, but for highly symbolic causes: against racism and anti-Semitism, against the death penalty (or against its re-establishment), for women's rights, etc., etc. But this is convenient! I take the demo the way one takes the métro, for a few hundred metres under I don't know what banner, then abandon it on Rue Saint-Germain to meet my friends in the restaurant. Larys, Jocelyn, Marcel and Sébastien are there. The Rennes contingent. And, let's be honest, the food is very good. It's an informal chat. Marcel is off tomorrow for his residency in Abbadia. Just to check out the place. There and back, that's about it. He'll be here again on Saturday. He wants to continue with his work on the bridges for Just a Walk . I have brought a printout of the first pages of this diary, which seem to go down well. So, I'll continue. Larys suggests that we all meet up in one of the towns where Jocelyn is staying. There is talk of Glasgow and the arts festival there, Jocelyn's projects, a film showing the waves of supporters going to the Rangers-Celtic derby, but also a work with a brass band. And why not Lisbon? Lisbon sounds like a good idea. Well, we'll see… Larys has a glass of white wine, red for Sébastien and me, water for Marcel and Jocelyn. At the end, Larys drinks green tea, me a black tea, the others, coffee. We come back to each person's role in the project, the difficulty of formalising and making visible each contribution. Marcel was quick to propose his videos, Roddy and Nuno, their Art Cup project. Jocelyn has done a lot of talking with the Portuguese choreographer Tiago Guedes, and with Alain Michard, here in Brittany. One thing that came out of discussions with Carla was an amusing little game on the European identity that one can partake of on the site. As for Sébastien, his presence is both more fluctuating (which is a quality prized by the Japanese) and more open. He expresses his interest and his difficulty. This touches on something at the heart of the project. For the question, one of the questions, at bottom, is this: what does an artist's residency actually mean? What should we talk about? Should it be talked about? Sébastien either produces pieces that may or not connect with Jocelyn's concerns, or he doesn't. A residency is also about putting your finger on the “here” of Rennes, meeting artists, the ones that, in the end, Jocelyn, would also have liked to meet elsewhere, the vicinity of the voyageur immobile . Sébastien says: “I like this uncomfortable situation.” When I think about it, it could be very interesting to meet up in Lisbon (or Glasgow). There is also the Art Cup proposition. That is no small matter. It's appealing. But the important thing, for the logic and coherence of Just a Walk , is that the Art Cup should be articulated with the ensemble, generate encounters and interferences that endow this complex process with all the subtleties and all the uncertainties that give it its density. We think again about the most appropriate way of organising it. In Rennes? In Nantes? In the meantime, I look around here and there to see if we have enough people to form this unlikely team of footballer-artists…. The demonstration is over and now they are in the city centre, people are doing their shopping.

Jean-Marc Huitorel