Works and Days, 1999
If the working class were to disappear, sociologists, including those who have specialized in the study of the world of work, would be very annoyed. Without any object of study, they would swell the ranks of the unemployed and it is from within that they could talk about the New Poverty. Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, with this jubilant argument, settles their account with the jargon and pretensions of some practitioners in the humanities. Fiercely.
In Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt’s viewpoint, workers do exist. In their diversity, their archaism, their gestures, their greatness and their humility. They dance in the space of the workshop, are swallowed up by the machines, engage in strange rituals, split up for a series of visual gags that go far beyond the anecdote.
It is with constant humor that the two approaches dialogue to install an amused but serious vision of the world of work, between tenderness and a great burst of laughter.
Christian Caujolle
—
Hôtel Paul Delaroche
58 rue Saint Lazare, 75009 Paris
+33 1 53 01 85 85
—
