Pierre Fisher & Justin Meekel

Pierre Fisher (1983) and Justin Meekel (1986) live and work in Paris (FR).

Graduates of Villa Arson and ENSAPC, Pierre Fisher & Justin Meekel decided in 2008 to form a duo, leading to several publishing, performance, and exhibition projects. They first collaborated through Verdure, a publishing project inviting artists to work with internet images.

In 2009, they revisited René Alleau’s 1966 Guide de la France mystérieuse with Verdure Tour 2009 – De La France Mystérieuse, a traveling publishing project across France. Acting as investigators of both the mundane and the mysterious, they collected everyday facts and new enigmas. Their performance was rooted in encounters and the continuous production of an edition—eight booklets published between July 8 and August 13—which, through a gift-exchange dynamic, fostered interaction with the people they met.

Far from the scientific rigor claimed by their predecessor René Alleau, they also distance themselves from the systematic approach of certain “artist-ethnologists” such as Jeremy Deller & Alan Kane, who have influenced them. Nonetheless, they approach their rural explorations with great seriousness, following a heuristic of drifting, where the guiding principle might be: the opportunity makes the thief (litteral translation from a French famous saying : l’occasion fait le larron)

This project was presented as part of INSIDERS at CAPC Bordeaux in 2010.