photographer
videographer

With Départ Anticipé, Valentin Astier reflects on what industrial transitions leave behind, on what persists when activity is withdrawn but places remain. The brutal reality of a rupture. 

 

In the corridors of S20 Industries in 2018, the factory was still working for Brandt, other principals, and for the very first prototypes of the Bob mini-dishwasher, developed by Daan Technologies. A brief industrial cohabitation, witnessing a moment suspended between heritage and mutation.

 

For the history of this factory is not just one of production. It is also marked by the slow erosion of its central role. At its peak in the 1990s, it provided a livelihood for more than 2,000 people, embodying a promise of stability, local know-how and anchorage. The gradual relocation of its activities, particularly abroad, has undermined this promise, revealing a larger, colder mechanism - that of economic choices made at a distance, with very concrete consequences.

 

The images in Départ Anticipé invite us to feel this tension: between activity that is still present and departure that has already begun. They question the way in which places absorb gestures, routines and absences. 

 

This exhibition is neither nostalgic nor accusatory. Rather, it explores a tipping point, that moment when we feel that something is coming to an end. A moment when the territory of work, beyond its economic function, becomes a space of memory, politics and human fragility.