By Normandy editorial staff
Posted on Oct 5, 20 at 11:12 am
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Within the framework of Rouen Impressée urban art festival, l’Franco-German artist Jan Vormann will install colored bricks of Danish origin to fill the holes in the facade of the Rouen Courthouse (Seine-Maritime). The operation will begin on Monday, October 5, 2020 and already voices are being raised against this ephemeral work.
One of the first comes from the historian Paul Le Trevier, who wrote several books on the history of Rouen during the Second World War, including “June 9, 1940, this day where Rouen fell”, which received the Historical Book Prize. of the Academy. Paul Le Trévier’s books have given rise to two TV documentaries: “From Rouen to Hiroshima” with France Télévisions and “1942, Rouen under the Allied bombs” with RMC Découverte. A specialist in bombing in Normandy, Paul Le Trévier also took part in the RMC Discovery TV documentary “1944, Le Havre under the Allied bombs”.
News: Can you remind us of the historical background?
Paul Le Trevier: In recent history, Rouen has known a particularly tragic fate. It is indeed one of the “martyred” cities of the Second War with Le Havre, Caen, Brest … In Rouen, the Allied bombardments caused more than 2000 deaths and disappearances, injured more than 12,000 people and destroyed several thousand homes. Here, not a single family came out of the Second World War unscathed. Rouen has benefited from unprecedented reconstruction and modernization. And, that’s good, because the city today offers a modern, renewed face, adapted to the requirements of a leading regional capital. But this plastic expression project launched by the new municipality scandalizes me. The Palais de Justice is one of the last monuments through which we can measure the suffering of an entire city and even an entire agglomeration. Half destroyed on April 19, 1944, it will be hit hard again on August 27, 1944, just before the Liberation. This is shown by the impacts on the facade of rue Jeanne d’Arc. Can we also forget that the Palais de Justice served as a prison for the Gestapo in Rouen and that many Resistance fighters were tortured there?
What shocks you at this point? The work with LEGO® or that we touch the courthouse?
P. LT : I was amazed and actually totally dismayed in front of so much memory poverty by the setting up of a Street art event. The project of our newly appointed councilors is indeed to block the impacts of bombs remaining on the Courthouse with … LEGO®! What shame and what indignity! Even temporary and partial, this degradation of memory is really distressing. Nobody asks that Rouen be a city frozen in its past, on the contrary. But by transforming these bomb holes into a field of plastic expression, you trample on symbols, you deny this aspect of Rouen’s history and you prevent any understanding. By distorting the real, you abolish meaning, and in the end you erase memory. Institutional street art cannot disregard history. Who would afford to do street art on the ruins of Hiroshima, the Katyn pits, or the barbed wire at Auschwitz? On the Rouen scale, the insult to memory is of the same nature. What is the point then of laying a wreath with compunction each year at the Monument aux Morts, if in town you do not respect the traces of this war? On the site of the City of Rouen we can read: “Jan Vormann plays with small urban defects by transforming them into a work of art. For Rouen Impressée, he interweaves Lego in the holes left by history. What? “Small urban flaws”? “Holes left by history”? But these are not flaws or holes, they are traces, wounds, screaming words – that we would like to silence? I even read elsewhere “rainbows will take the place of shrapnel”. If it’s not erasure! Today the witnesses of the Second War disappear. We have reached a critical point in terms of transmission. The rare vestiges of a historical period must be protected and even more respected! I spoke to several elders and their descendants, many of whom through their testimonies helped me in my research. This sort of expression on such a painful monument in Rouen deeply upsets them. They feel bruised once again and humiliated by so much contempt. A psychiatrist told me to spend a lot of time with old people to explore their still alive fears and nightmares, related to these bombings. The wounds of history are not a playground! Why attack a monument whose message is still so present? On the contrary, it is up to the City to maintain and clearly transmit this message. However, this project is obviously hurtful for part of Rouen, and not only the old ones: we cannot hurt some to amuse others. Besides, it is not by painting history in pink that it becomes more “cool” or more acceptable. On the contrary, it is through research and knowledge that we can first understand, then put into perspective the historical events that preceded us. To no longer suffer them. This Street art operation is part of a series of memorial provocations on other subjects, statue among others. By dint of erasing the holes in history, we end up creating memory gaps. There were a thousand places in Rouen where Street art could have expressed itself. But the “Legoism” of the municipality has chosen to attack the memory of Rouen. What if we just respected history a little?
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