Creator of the fantastic series Les Cités obscures with his accomplice Benoît Peeters, the Belgian François Schuiten escaped to the planet Mars thanks to drawing during the coronavirus pandemic. During this period which created " distrust and the irrational ", he regretted that culture had not "taken to the streets ". The 64-year-old designer, who announced in 2019 that he would stop comics for fear of making too many albums, is brimming with projects.
How did you experience this period of confinement?
I am fortunate to do a job that is naturally confined, we delve into drawing, into imaginations, our stories, our passions. Drawing is magic, you don't need anything, a sheet of paper, a pencil ... It's an extraordinary privilege. When I'm in bad shape, I draw and it gets better, it's my way of looking after myself. I have never drawn so much with such beautiful concentration. Even during Skype meetings, I continued, the camera does not show my hand. When I was a child in class, I hid my hand from the teacher's view to draw.
What will you take away from it?
What interested me the most was how you create fear around the world. Fear creates distrust, the irrational. We had attitudes outside of all logic (...) We saw people terrorized, it's very disturbing, it gives a feeling of great sadness because seeing smiles, being able to touch people, that's what is beautiful. Suddenly we were deprived of these emotions, it is a terrible frustration. The word "war" (used by Emmanuel Macron) is a colossal error, I did not like the infantilization ... It is a situation that could resemble the war but only in hospitals and places where we treated. For most people, this is a stop, a withdrawal, an extremely difficult situation. This word dramatizes excessively. I don't like being taken for a fool, I am always sensitive to people who try to help me understand, and not who guide me like a little boy who would have made a mistake.
How do you see the world after?
The post-virus city is what we should have done (during confinement), putting culture in the street, in the middle. Rather than people banging on pans, having a quarter of an hour with an actor who would have read a few poems on the microphone ... Or projecting images on facades, we could do anything. It was disturbing all the potential that it opened when there were no more cars ... We saw all the emotions that the city could give us while it is rigidified in its functional roles, travel for food , for work. It annoyed me that the artists did not invade the streets, did not create shows outside, all the balconies can become theater balconies. Why have we not all decided, I also want to, to invent a culture of confinement in the heart of the city?
What projects during and after the crisis?
A travel diary from the Vuitton collection on ... Mars. For the first time, it will be in a city that does not exist. I travel to Mars, it is very mineral, I am surrounded by books on Mars. It is a very rigorous immersion in terms of lights, climate ... There will be 120 color drawings, I made 40. A futuristic series Compulsions for an American producer, starting first with my images, which makes me participate in the story. It will be a book of illustrations and then a series. Muse , a show with a dancer and a musician around drawing in the making. I will do live drawing. I have just won a competition with an architect to “design” the CNIT at La Défense, this huge concrete veil, which will host a new Grand Paris station. Thousands of square meters to be identified.