Kilometer
Covid lockdowns all over the world came with their own set of rules imposed on populations. Some countries forbade people from leaving their homes, locking whole neighborhoods for weeks on end until case numbers went to zero. Other gave a 30min, 200m limit on time and space allowed to each person.
In France, it was one kilometer, one hour. This limit created an unprecedented way of approaching one’s existence. Metaphorically “escaping” was harder than it ever was, and we were forced to live in the present, in a single kilometer.
Our second lockdown was spent in Vendée, a historically significant yet essentially unknown département. A region known for its cabbages, wetlands, coast, and lack of available arable land.
This was our world, and became our reality during this unending pandemic. The kilometer around the house was our space, our only direct concern, and we needed to make sense of it.
There, we spent our kilometer, where we walked our hour.
This work is dedicated to those who opened their doors to us, but also to those who couldn’t spend a month in the countryside. Those who had to endure their lockdowns in crowded flats, with an abusive partner, or just alone, seeing copy-pasted days go by endlessly.