The Fortress - Renault Billancourt

Martina Maffini & Michael De Pasquale
The Fortress - Renault Billancourt

When reflecting upon the transformation in our ever-changing world of labor, urban renewal and the resulting redevelopment; we are confronted with the history of the former Renault-Billancourt factory’s workers. The factory was once home to 37,000 employees and the last car rolled off the assembly line in 1992. In the 15 years that followed, the factory was slowly demolished. The area is under a serious redevelopment with the perspctive of a residential and commercial project by architect Jean Nouvel, the undergoing construction of a music center by Conseil General and an art center now compromised by financial and judicial problems.

The portraits were shot in the employees’ former workplaces and they are supplemented by photographs of their personal and professional belongings: tools, work clothes, union documents, labor pamphlets, photographs, souvenirs …

This work is a reflection on the role of memory and on the thigh relationship between economical and urban changes that led to a radical transformation of social and urban function and composition. Closing the factory was shutting down an entire city that had developed on the shadow of the plant. Our goal is to create an interactive body of work where through portraits, still life and archival material, the audience is forced to confront to the economical, social and personal changes the entire community of Boulogne-Billancourt had to face after Renault’s plant shut down.