The firm (Islands of desire cycle) - 2016/2017
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Tristan, for them, is the refuge where the wickedness of the
elements allows one to escape the wickedness of men.
Hervé Bazin, The Blessed of Desolation.
The series The Firm is the first chapter of an anthology (Islands of Desire) dedicated to insular space. The island, a space of few people, nourishes a common imagination shared by the greatest number. Beyond simple distance, it induces the idea of a break with daily life. Islands fascinate the traveler as they shape their inhabitants. In the collective imagination they are at the borders, they represent the median place between the unknown and the known. The etymology of the word "isolate" refers us to "separate like an island (isola)" and I could hardly find anything better than Tristan da Cunha to begin a cycle on insularity.
The name of the Portuguese navigator who discovered it in the 16th century is misleading for this discretely mythical and resolutely British island. The volcano is eight days by boat from the Cape, the only way to get there. This makes this confetti of one hundred square kilometers, a perfect triangle placed in the middle of the South Atlantic, the most isolated inhabited territory on the planet. But it was less the exoticism of its remoteness than the singular history and founding idealistic values of the small society that clings to it that pressed me to go there.
In 1816 a contract was signed between the first inhabitants, who designated themselves "the firm," and the British crown. Its few articles notably announced that "no one shall rise here above anyone else"; "all must be considered equal" and "all profits made will be shared equitably." In fact there was then no private property, no chief, no money, all helped each other mutually. Even today the land is communal. One only has to help oneself on the sole condition of building one's house there. Mutual aid has meaning there, because no one can exist without the other. And they continue to live together in the full sense of the term.
The utopian experiment remained anonymous until 1961, when the volcano stirred. All two hundred and sixty islanders were evacuated and propelled into post-industrial Great Britain. The British government then thought as much to save them from an assuredly dire fate as to enlighten them about the benefits of consumer society. And incidentally to get rid of this tiny territory of virtually no strategic interest and under permanent financial life support. But the Tristanians were not too impressed by this modern world so far from their own and all preferred to return to their island two years later.
It was through an account by Raymond Rallier du Baty that I discovered this punctuation mark escaped into the margin of the World. The explorer stopped there in 1907 and testified: "Tristan da Cunha is a society such as philosophers have always dreamed of. All contribute to the common good. There is among them neither hatred, nor envy, nor malice." And my curiosity was awakened. It was fully sharpened by Hervé Bazin's The Blessed of Desolation (1970): "sons of exiles, of castaways, they are raised in mistrust of this world where theft, crime, war are things as common as they are unknown on the island. Tristan, for them, is the refuge where the wickedness of the elements allows one to escape the wickedness of men."
In Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire, a dying man enumerates everything he had left to accomplish. Going to Tristan da Cunha was part of it. After having traversed it from end to end through my readings, I decided to put everything into action to land there. But going to Tristan da Cunha is quite a challenge; some wait more than two years. First one must obtain authorization from the island council. Then one must find a place on one of the few fishing boats that serve it. When the archipelago is finally in sight, after eight days of navigation to the threshold of the roaring forties, the weather must be clement enough to unload cargo and passengers, which is never guaranteed. I succeeded and stayed there for nearly three months at the end of 2016.
The Firm is a multidisciplinary work that combines photography, video and narrative as well as historical documents consulted in the collections of different institutions (British Library, National Maritime Museum, Royal Geographical Society, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, etc.). The series questions the legacy of the idealistic principles of equality and sharing established two centuries ago by William Glass, the founding father of this singular family of voluntary exiles.
Project funded by the Vannes Festival.