Simon Boudvin, Tyndo De Thouars, 2019

To the east of the city of Thouars, near the Prince of Wales’ tower, the seneschal Louis Tyndo built the first part of his private mansion. Each century, a new wing was added to the large Renaissance house to accommodate a new use: housing, barracks, prison, school, socio-cultural center. Today, the building is being renovated to house the Conservatory of Music and Dance.

The time of this reconversion is an opportunity to inventory what will disappear: the traces left by schoolgirls, workers, prisoners, soldiers, passers-by. Snippets of sentences, notes from the construction site, names, initials, unintelligible signs, mute figures; this is what this book records. Simon Boudvin photographs these traces and transcribes them according to epigraphic conventions to compose a concrete poetry, a chaotic narrative, a synthesis of the building’s writings. The text assembles what the users wanted to leave in the hard. The marks of their passage express their moods, their uneasiness and their necessity, but also a part of freedom. They make the spirit of the place.