FICTION
POLITIQUE
STORY
BOARD
AU LUXE COMMUNAL - LANDMARKS
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Napoleon's café serves many functions: estaminet (popular small cafe), grocery store, shoe repair shop, cinemas, library, museums. It's a spatial and temporal labyrinth linking disjointed historical episodes, past and present, history and fiction, utopia and dystopia.
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HERE'S HOW TO FIND YOUR WAY AROUND
- The images lead to the entrance of each floor.
- Links in red quotation marks lead to the advertised sites.
THE CAFÉ-GROCERY STORE, where Napoléon Gaillard welcomes visitors.
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- Behind the bar, the door to the [barricades rooms]. ​
- The doorway to [Vendôme square], de-imperialized after William Morris.​
- On the wall, Gauthier's drawings leads to [Mazas prison]. ​
- On the tables of the cafe, [discussions] between the actors and actresses of the
Commune.​​
- Under the platform, the [débeurdinoir].
- Under the staircase is the [Kinetoscope], showing documentaries on the
Commune. A trapdoor leads to the [underground passageways], Blanqui's 7
jails at the Castle of Taureau.​​
- The [cafe's front door] leads to the cafe's exterior, whether dystopian, utopian
or more “realistic”.
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Napoléon Gaillard SHOEMAKING WORSHOP, his treatise on gutta-percha shoes.
- His [treatise on gutta-percha shoes],
- The [shoes on display] will enable you to transplane to other areas of the site.
- The door to the [cinema], with a program of fiction films.​​​​​​​​
- The door that leads to the [deep-sea barge] where the cafe is transformed
into a Cabaret.
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STAIRCASE to the first floor.
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THE LIBRARY, where photographic and textual archive documents will be stored (in progress).
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Here you can access [projects carried out by the Commune]: main measures / decrees, orders, proclamations / Journal officiel / unofficial part of the Journal officiel /.
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and the [Theoretical and historical context of the Project].
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The [MUSEUM OF INVENTIONS] presents the inventions made by the communard.e.s and participants of the Paris Commune.​
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STAIRCASE to the second floor.
​SHOWCASES FOR EXTRAPOLATED PROJECTS
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Cartoons from the satirical press, locked in display cases, lead to “extrapolated projects”:
- [Thiers and the hydra of socialism],
- [meeting between Napoléon Gaillard and Marx],
- [game of massacre],
- [Fourier's bestiary],
- [putting the Sacré-Coeur into orbit],
- [republican statistics].
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Future showcases:
- [Louise Michel's Beyond Dreams Keyboard],
- [elevation of asylum stones],
- [re-titling of Courbet paintings]....
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The THREE DOORS lead to :
- to the room of the [cheerful nightingale and dance of death], for the poorly
buried of the Commune.
- to the [Thiers wheel],
- to the photography museum :
- [Braquehais and Disdéri room],
- [Appert room],
- [room of the game of Paris burned],
- [room of the pétroleuses],
- [booklets of Paris in ruins].
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[THE ROOM OF VERSAILLES' MAGICIAN]
Inspired by Lyman Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz (1900).
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STAIRCASE to the Foretop.
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THE FORETOP - TRANSFORMATION ROOM
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On the third floor, at great height, Napoleon has a transformation room :
- [the room of communal luxury],
Courbet : colonne des peuples and Grue de la paix - Kropotkine : potagers à hautes-rendements - Horeau : Hôtel de ville en verre - Reclus : globe terrestre à Chaillot - Anonyme : monument aux Fédérés - Hugo : loi d'aministie plénière des communards - Legrand : projet de tableau - Frondat : remplacement de la colonne Vendôme.
- [of uchronies],
- [of Communes from elsewhere]
- Rojava, Kerala, Oackland, Chiapas, Nantes, Shanghai, Notre Dame-des-Landes, Commune libre de Saint-Martin...
- "Communes of Paris" in Russia.
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- [the enemy's bestiary-chamber],
- essay on [Communal Luxury].
This room also leads to the [celestial battle of Astras and Monstras] (after Aby Warburg), during which the constellations of the Paris Commune were born.
From the Kinetoscope trapdoor (in the café, under the stairs) it leads to :
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Blanqui's 7 jails are linked to Baudelaire's poem [The seven old men], which Walter Benjamin associated with the text written by Blanqui during his imprisonment, [Eternity by the Stars].
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The lower platform will allow visitors and Blanqui to escape, giving access to a raft which, guided by the stars, will take them to the island of March 18, 1871, the first day of the Paris Commune (Blanqui was arrested by Thiers on March 17).