La Fosse

In December 2000, Olivier Deprez, Nathalie lambert, Jean-Christophe Long, Eric Lambe, Olivier Quemere, Sylvain Victor and I, we spent a nice month in Brussels invited by Freon Publisher. Our goal was to tell a 16 pages story about Brussels, capital of Belgium (where I lived 5 years, 1985-1990), but also capital of the European Community. The result was a book called Recits de ville, Frigobox, Serie II. I did a story called La fosse, which meaning in English could be septic tank or communal grave. La Fosse is about farmer people from my childhood time, immigrants and administrative workers living in that city. For many Europeans farmers, Brussels was the main responsible for their bad lives. In 1996, when I was 32 years old, coming back from Portugal where I was living since 1993 (I moved definitively there in 1997), I worked during 6 months as a cow-boy in a farm in Pont-Melvez, Brittany. Everyday, I milked 40 cows, then I brought the herd to pasture on before to clean the whole shit. The worse part of this job was precisely to clean that whole shit on the animal housing. Also if I was listening some classical songs through the tractor’s radio, to fall into the tank was my chronic nightmare because the tractor was an old Massey Ferguson which brake was not working. Another time, I will tell something about my childhood. It’s all related with that story. For now, here are three pages. Watercolor + pencil colors.