"[...] Definition. When any given bodies of the same or different magnitude are compelled by other bodies to remain in contact, or if they be moved at the same or different rates of speed, so that their mutual movements should preserve among themselves a certain fixed relation, we say that such bodies are in union, and that together they compose one body or individual, which is distinguished from other bodies by this fact of union [...]
( Spinoza, Ethics)

LES EMPAILLES, 2003-work in progress

(old clothes, straw)

Conserving, stuffing clothes with straw like dead animals used to be stuffed. Like taxidermists that try to bring the animals back to life, but in presence not in its initial form. Stuffing the clothes like animals, to the limits of what the skin or the clothes can take. Deforming them, bloating them.
This process is like trying to give back life to the old clothes, but with straw instead of bodies and in an excessive stuffed and bloated way as to deform them.
The special process of the installation is also important to the artefact. I asked people living in the city where the show was to take place, to give me their old-fashioned and used clothes no longer worn. I sewed them together in their extremities in order to make them into one object, one piece._They were then stuffed in order to conserve them like as a species on the way of extinction. I preserved them like a "second skin"of mankind. This second skin which is so important in determining family origins or social status for each human being.