Mémoire Sauvée de l’Eau, Le Temps Profond de la Mer
(Memories Rescued from Underwater, The Deep Time of the Sea)
2025-2026
installation view in Les Champs Libres in Rennes from April 28th to September 27th 2026
Scenography : Manon Lanjouère with the supervision of Candice Rogers
Lumière : Arthur Scatton & Adrien Beaumont
With Mémoire sauvée de l’eau (Memories Rescued from Underwater), Manon Lanjouère opens a new oceanic chapter in her work and advocates here for recognition of industrial fishing’s role in the collapse of benthic* biodiversity (living on the ocean floor). This dystopian tale captures the full violence of deep-sea dredging, which acts like immense ploughing, repeatedly churning and stirring up the sandy or muddy layers. The species torn up, broken, crushed or discarded would find their final resting place beneath a layer of sediment, escaping immediate decomposition. Thus, far from human eyes, in the dark depths of the oceans, molecular transformations would take place over the centuries. Slowly but surely, the organic remains will fossilise, becoming the last witnesses to a little-known biodiversity that is essential to the balance of ecosystems.
This installation, presented at Les Champs Libres, is distinguished by a conceptual framework that draws on the conventions of palaeontology to create a temporal and critical shift. Indeed, the ‘false fossils’ displayed in the exhibition space do not refer to a bygone past, but to a speculative projection of the future. This reversal gives the work a unique significance: it is no longer a matter of observing what has been, but of anticipating, in a materialised form, the possible traces of our present.
In this way, the installation gives substance to issues often perceived as abstract, particularly those linked to political inaction in the face of contemporary crises. By borrowing the forms and language of scientific evidence, it lends these hypotheses an air of factuality, as if the consequences of our choices—or our failures to act—were already recorded in a future archive. This strategy reinforces the work’s critical dimension, confronting the viewer with a reversed temporality in which the future acts as a revelation of the present.
The blurring of the lines between fiction and reality invites us to view our era as a layer still in the making, one that can be analysed in hindsight for its shortcomings.
The artworks and the installation suggest that, without a political commitment commensurate with the stakes, this dynamic may paradoxically lead to a form of condemnation. In this sense, it offers a critical reflection on the limits of progress divorced from collective responsibility.
This installation, presented at Les Champs Libres, is distinguished by a conceptual framework that draws on the conventions of palaeontology to create a temporal and critical shift. Indeed, the ‘false fossils’ displayed in the exhibition space do not refer to a bygone past, but to a speculative projection of the future. This reversal gives the work a unique significance: it is no longer a matter of observing what has been, but of anticipating, in a materialised form, the possible traces of our present.
In this way, the installation gives substance to issues often perceived as abstract, particularly those linked to political inaction in the face of contemporary crises. By borrowing the forms and language of scientific evidence, it lends these hypotheses an air of factuality, as if the consequences of our choices—or our failures to act—were already recorded in a future archive. This strategy reinforces the work’s critical dimension, confronting the viewer with a reversed temporality in which the future acts as a revelation of the present.
The blurring of the lines between fiction and reality invites us to view our era as a layer still in the making, one that can be analysed in hindsight for its shortcomings.
The artworks and the installation suggest that, without a political commitment commensurate with the stakes, this dynamic may paradoxically lead to a form of condemnation. In this sense, it offers a critical reflection on the limits of progress divorced from collective responsibility.
