Sloft Edition 07

Our individual utopias are part of the collective space.

In this seventh bilingual French-English issue:

• From Madrid to London (and closer to home via the Loiret, Pyrénées-Atlantiques and of course Paris,) our new issue’s selection of homes has a whiff of utopia to it. A polymorphous, human-scale utopia, providing a clutch of responses to an increasingly dysfunctional world. Far from the great univocal narratives (with their totalitarian undertones,) each of these dwellings tells of its own project and vision: that of a life in Technicolor in a Madrid apartment; that of an impressionistic painting of a riverside cottage; or that of days basking in the soft daylight of… a barn. Like the drops that form rivers, can all these bubbles coalesce to form a better reality?

• These individual initiatives, however beautiful, must not mask another reality: until proven otherwise, our homes still have thresholds. They open onto a common, shared space that makes their existence possible: public space. A space that has never been so fragile and necessary. Between attempts at private appropriation under the guise of general interest, commercial over-exploitation, lack of investment or even outright abandonment by public authorities, this space – which, it must be stressed – belongs to everyone is only truly public when it can be used safely at any time of day or night. But there's still a long way to go. After the success of the Paralympic Games, we need to consider whether, once the sports facilities have been dismantled and the extraordinary organization that made them possible has disappeared, the greatest challenge of people with disabilities could be our insufficiently inclusive public realm. In fact, it is an essential embodiment of the republican promise to emancipate individuals – in their bodies, their identities, but also their thinking, while also promoting the free circulation of ideas and opinions, as expressed by Jürgen Habermas.
  

• To live one's life to the fullest, without being subjected to any form of injunction, limit or oppression, is the utopia that artist and photographer Romy Alizée claims – and lives. Posing nude in her photos, exposing her unabashed sexuality, she breaks down representations and participates in her own way to the broader movement of women's emancipation. Alizée takes her freedom as a citizen very seriously, no matter how angry it makes those who see their power under attack. It's daring and touching. It is very necessary. And also very simple: Long live freedom.

Eclecticism, poetry, art, escapism, beauty and good ideas are definitely not a function of square metres!