[a platform for exchanges and a garden of solidarity]
2011-2015

In 2013, Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers will continue to host the project La Semeuse as it grows, with a dual social and artistic approach. The aim is to tie the issues the project deals with to the town of Aubervilliers and to encourage residents to question in a broad sense the place we reserve for living things in our modern society as well as the ways and conditions under which we create a life together.

ITS BEGINNINGS
Artist and architect Marjetica Potrc, in cooperation with RozO Architectes, began a research project in 2010 called La Semeuse ou le devenir indigene, linking plant biodiversity to cultural diversity in the town of Aubervilliers. The project continued to develop in 2011 with the contribution of Guilain Roussel, landscaper; it is currently coordinated by landscaper Margaux Vigne.

LIFE – DIVERSITY – CITIES
La Semeuse initiates a reflection on the role of living things in our contemporary societies. With the notion of diversity, the question at hand is that of living together – bringing together people and associations to deal with current, local issues, imagining a more sustainable future in the context of a city’s quick development. La Semeuse is a project that grows organically, cultivating connections between people and place. Through gardening, a valued act and a means that is available to everyone to make a difference in their region, La Semeuse works to bring balance to urban and human spaces.

PLATFORM FOR EXCHANGE AND CREATION
La Semeuse, intended as a tool to serve residents, is a platform to raise awareness, exchange knowledge and provide experiences of the environment and biodiversity, right in the heart of the Quatre-Chemins neighbourhood in Aubervilliers. It is firmly rooted in Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers and constitutes a place for theoretical reflection and artistic practices that grow out of and surround these questions. In 2013, La Semeuse will grow to add new orientations proposed by a new guest artist.
Through workshops as well as through different moments when the garden and Les Laboratoires will be open to the public, people are invited to bring their contributions to the project, making it a fundamentally collective and cooperative production. This collective experience is part of a newly created tool at Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers – Le Labo des Labos, a place to create an involved public working in partnership with the projects.

GARDEN OF SOLIDARITY, RUE LÉCUYER
The project takes form in a garden on the square in front of Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, a garden that is also a place to share seeds, plants, knowledge, know-how and questions related to urban gardening, with individuals and organisations from Aubervilliers and nearby. The garden is a powerful sign for Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, a connection between the population and this unique, demanding cultural place that lies at the heart of the city. La Semeuse then also aims to reveal the value in this open, concrete and grassy space between the street and the building that houses Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, creating an intermediate link between inside and outside, constructed and non-constructed space.
This space, inaugurated in April 2012, is open to residents of Aubervilliers and particularly neighbourhood residents. The garden is made up of a lot and large, movable bags (construction bags). The current plantings are the result of what was shared by Aubervilliers gardeners and the workshops of the past year. In a dynamic aiming to rehabilitate the garden and encourage local residents to appropriate it, these forms are destined to change. In the near future the garden could be organised into several plots:
      • one part of the garden could be taken over by local residents who garden
      • one part could serve as a plant nursery (plants, cuttings, seed collection) and for gardening experiments (green laboratory, evolution of fallow land)
      • one part could be a tool for collective teaching workshops;
      • one part could remain there for collective enjoyment of it and would continue to be a space for public use, particularly for those who use the square.


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La Semeuse benefits from the support of the Conseil régional d'Île-de-France, the Département de la Seine Saint-Denis, the CAF (Caisse d'Allocations Familiales) of Seine Saint-Denis, the Acsé (Agence nationale pour la cohésion sociale et l’égalité des chances), the City of Aubervilliers, Lapeyre and the Fondation de France.


It is realized in collaboration with Katie Bachler, Allison Danielle Behrstock, Sébastien Guillemin (2010-2011) and Valérie Lessertisseur, and in partnership with Une Oasis dans la ville (Aubervilliers), the Petits prés verts (Aubervilliers), the Jardins ouvriers des Vertus (Aubervilliers), the Bois de Senteur (Aubervilliers), Auberfabrik (Aubervilliers), theMission Locale (Aubervilliers), the Lycée Le Corbusier (Aubervilliers), the Crèche Lécuyer (Aubervilliers), the Maison de l’emploi (Aubervilliers), the ALJ93, the ADEF, the cité des Fusains (RIVP), the Boutique de quartier Paul Bert, municipality services of: "vie associative", "démocratie locale", "économie sociale et solidaire" and the "espaces verts" of Aubervilliers and Plaine Commune.

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Drawing: Marjetica Potrc, 2011