In Cergy, France, I explore the placement of inanimate objects from conurbation in 1960s Paris suburbs by which the town Cergy-Pontoise was established. As urban planning continues to impact the economy, jobs, physiology, and psychology of residents, I wander through Cergy to understand the culture. I contact the office of the Mayor of Cergy to converse, but they are unresponsive. My friend organizes conversations with Cergy residents who happen to be Black. I discover how much I have in common with them – they’re also managing struggles of classism, racism, exoticism, and Otherness. The unfamiliar becomes familiar from an African Diaspora context and the intrigue of the inanimate produces a global link in matters of Blackness. Now, I have a better sense of how the urban planning and residents affect each other. Someone told me that "collective finds of inanimacy are timeless images" of Cergy that illustrate resident and visitor stories of migration, isolation, and renewal.
Inanimate objects impress their significance through their positioning, their design, the financial value, and the human labor used to birth them. These objects create a façade that manipulate an on-looker’s perception of a city, as well as influence the on-looker’s idea of whom resides in the city. Using photography as the primary medium, collective finds of inanimacy examines the inanimate objects of a French ville, Cergy, to explore its cultural and sociopolitical history. With these images, inanimate objects are personified, confronted, questioned, and labelled. What are the narratives constructed? What judgment commences? How does that affect the social interaction between resident and visitor?
collective finds of inanimacy challenges the audience to question the perception of reality that is manufactured by inanimate objects.