Écriture Productive, Fish - 1995 (35 min video, marine chart, text, images, letters)
History of the word Poisson (fish) The word Poisson has been written by the stroke of a trawler fishing during the night of the 21 to the 22 of october 1995. It's means the way of the boat on the sea and therefore the trawl's one on the bottom(net's one). The fishes being on the way of this writing were fished then. The boat is fit out with a computer system. The maps of the marine bottoms are inserted into the programmes of the computer which is connected to the GPS (apparatus giving the position by satellite). As the boat is moving, its tracing is posted on the screen and stays written. Then its with the help of those apparatus that the world could be written and visualised. We have leaved La Turballe's Harbour at about 6 pm. When we were in the open sea at about 8 pm, the net was put into the water at the base of the "P". The captain of the boat and I were not shure that we could succeed in write this word because its tracing was implying many turns which are difficult to realize when you drag a fishing gear of several tonnes. The stream and the danger of making overturn the panels (metal plates of 300 kgs used to move apart the net) prevented us from turning too quickly. To write this word we had also to find an area big enough in good bottom (area of soft bottom without rocks and therefore without any danger of tearing up the net) because it was obvious that the word will stretch over several kilometers. The most perilous point we had to face after to 2 hours and half of fishing was the point of the "i". The way through the based of each "S" was quite delicate too. When we were going down for the "o" to be able to write the "N" we has to get round a rocky area. The writing of the wole word lasted 7 hours for a way of 40 kilometers. The word was spreading over 7 kilometers long and produced 500 kg of fishes (whiting, hake, mackerel, squid, pollack, John Dory, grey mullet, conger...). About 150 or 200 kg were sold on the sunday 22 of october 1995 in the market of Talensac in Nantes where I could get on this occasion a fish shop. The fish left was sold by auction.
