A day at Palais de Tokyo with Claude Emmanuelle

Photography by Claude Emmanuelle

To form a group is, first and foremost, an individual commitment to the collective.
A choice, a stance.
And yet, some groups live in individuality, carried by a system that offers them enough comfort to feel at ease, anywhere.
And then, there are the others.
Those who still, even today, must force open the doors of a social structure that holds them in contempt.

To remember. To celebrate.
To bring historical context back to the center.
To come together, to reveal the traces of a shared breath — this is how space is reclaimed from what has been violently rendered invisible.

One word is missing here, and perhaps it’s just as well that it isn’t present: resilience.
But is it truly resilience when, from nothing, possibilities for joy are built?
Are these traces of joy simply moments of empowering happiness?

Or something even larger — a reactivation of the past, a living memory, a political gesture in motion — for a world more just, more social?

What I’m discovering here, for now, is that a group becomes active only if it’s present in the room.
So, within the white cube of the Palais de Tokyo, I wonder:
What if revolutions sometimes emerge from emptiness?

A void inhabited by ghosts.
Those who drift, brush against the walls, echo through certain rooms…

Like an incantation of burning ideas,
a sudden ignition that, without fail, sparks a surge of serotonin.