MARGAUX VELEZ
1/
A- The LABA is a real lab where we gather people, personnality, knowledge, skills but not just
from us, we match people together on the projects with their own activities. The base is really the
culture, and after what you can explore, the sights of what culture could be, with sports, tourism,
schools, foods, environment, digital, civil rights, music, etc.
B- I’m the EU project manager. I manage to coordinate projects but I’m not alone. It’s really a collaborative approach. It’s really to make with all the partners. I support them for administration and I’m also supported by partners. We have different aspects, I started to participate to the training parts, not as an expert but as someone who has experience on the field. In LABA, we train but we also coordinate, so it’s not just an experience from the book but from the field. I’m here since four years.
C/ The LABA gives me opportunities to work in a very crosscutting environment. I made general
studies, a general bachelor with a lot of subjects like art, litterature, human science, workshop,
etc. I wa in a multi-disciplinary approach. In the LABA, I continue this kind of approach in a professional way, in real life and I go on to work with so many persons from so many fields, cultures, countries since four years. It was impressive to have these possibilities to work with.
2/
A- Regional languages because France is composed of very different cultures, and we have richness of regional cultures, diversities and also languages. I include metropolitan France but also all the territories in the world.
B- I dance regional dances, basque and traditional dances but also modern jazz, classic and latin
dance.
3/ The secret life of Margaux Velez by Sophie Guenebaut
Margaux is earthly, consoling and constant. Margaux is one of those who have everything in mind,
for us, for him, for them. We say of her: “She has her feet on the ground and her head on her
shoulders”. Valiant and punctual, she leads us to achieve everything we imagined to achieve.
Young midwife. To better remember everything we need to remember, Margaux sometimes has to try to forget it. She does this every Monday, in secret.
On Monday, Margaux is alone, when she returns home. Barely arrived, his little rabbit comes to sniff his heels. He follows her into the kitchen, where she puts down her small groceries, her purse and where she drinks a large glass of water while looking at the greenery on the balcony, across the street. He follows her into the bathroom, when she goes to wash her hands and remove her makeup. She takes off her shoes, undresses and puts on a long chiffon dress, red and flared.
He follows her in on the blue sofa, lies down against her thigh, and shows her her stomach that
calls for the scratches she lavishes on him with her fingernails.
Margaux puts her glasses on the armrest and puts on her Repetto ballet flats, model Brigitte Bardot. And presto, she rises. A few centimeters above the sofa. Not too much, just the right amount of time to relax, and lighten up from all that thinking. Rabbit, roll over in the hollow of the sofa, still warm, and open his surprised eyes. He sees her, light, floating a few inches from
the ground and watches her move in the living room, above the coffee table. Margaux is dancing.
She embraces an invisible rider and in the heat of summer, begins a Latin dance, all in rhythm
and in silence.
Rabbit watches and gently lets himself be lulled by the flexibility of the movement, his legs stretching out and soaring in weightlessness. The arms confidently support the rider, who arches her and turns her around in the middle of the living room. Slowly, Rabbit closes his eyes and goes back
to sleep, all in length, abandoned to the heat and the dance.
MATHIS TESSIER
1/
A- For me, the LABA is an organization who helps projects with EU funds and are really implicated
in the construction of the projects. Sometimes, we do the communication of the projects, we are
going in the field, under observation.
B- I’m doing the communication in the LABA. I do a lot of different tasks as creation, logos, social
medias, photos, videos. I’m here since two months in internship, I have two months left.
C- That’s my first real job experience, I learned a lot about people and creation skills. I don’t have
the exact word for the moment, but I feel that I learned a lot. I didn’t know about the LABA before, I found the offer on LinkedIn and the structure looks like very interesting with very cool projects.
2/
A- I think the food is very important in french culture. I don’t travel a lot so I can’t compare with
foreign countries. Conviviality is a marker of french culture.
B- I’m not a big cooker but I try to learn day after day.
I create some music. I make CAM (Computer Aided Music), it’s music with computer, not with real
instruments. It’s an environment we always share with people, we connect with new people. That’s
very interesting. It’s mainly hip-hop instrumental but that can be all I want. I don’t work with lyricists but that’s my objective.
3/ The secret lif of Mathis Tessier by Pauline Lherault
Mathis Tessier, despite his young age and being the communication trainee at LABA by day, by
night... Mathis is a real professional of the Scrabble.
As an expert in the game, Mathis regularly participates in Scrabble tournaments after dark.
For him, spelling and grammar have no secrets. It’s a real hidden reflex for him.
As soon as he reads a particular word, he calculates the number of points he could get by playing
the next game. What will be his next move? Will he be able to place the word “oxyphenbutazone» in his next game?
We will never know...
SOPHIE GUENEBAUT
1/
A- For me, the LABA is a place where all of us can experiment some new projects, but also new
relationships with european partners. And we love to work with actors of cultural world.
In the LABA, we try to manage the project and to be sure that all will be ok to the beginning to the
end. So we have to work a lot with administrative things because EU funds are very demanding,
it requires a lot of efforts. The LABA tries to help for fund raising for french cultural partners. We
aren’t experts of fundraising, not anthropologists or artists but we are sure that we have a place to
work on this place, we can propose things, take initiatives even if we are not specialist.
B- I am the director, the founder of LABA with Patrick Duval, we imagined it nine years ago. I was
the administrator of Le Rocher de Palmer during five years. The historic point is that culture has
not a strong place in the european place.
We wanted to prove that the cultural operators have their own place. Europe was more about education, economic, inclusion, innovation, social problems.
C- LABA is a good tool for me to work on my personal, intellectual, economic and social emancipation, and, as you know, it’s a long way. For, it’s important and difficult and the LABA is also a place for that. I speak with anthropologists and artists, I’m not a specialist but it is a nice place to be, it reinforces my curiosity.
2/
A- Cooking, cheeses and that people are always negative, also in the south of France. I love
french cheese. It’s a problem because I love it too much, specially from the North like the maroilles and livarot. It’s very french.
B- I love stories, it’s my speciality. Books, cinema, everything, I love everything because it feeds
my own interior void.
3/ The secret life of Sophie Guenebaut by Jessica Favarel
Sophie Guenebaut wakes up every morning at the same time: 6:54 am, without an alarm clock.
She can’t help it; she just wakes up as if her alarm clock had been transplanted in her chest.
Once she’s up and out of bed, her mind is so unclear and fuzzy she can’t think of anything except
breakfast: strong coffee and Maroilles cow’s-milk cheese. What Maroilles brings to her life, no one
can put into words. The secret of this renowned cheese from northern France comes from the cow,
called a “Maroillaise”. Only 11 farms master the process.
And Sophie knows it. When she buys her Maroilles cheese she travels across France to get it
at the Pont des Loups farm in the little town of Maroilles. She worked in B thune in the National
Drama Center for several years and this is when she tasted Maroilles for the first time. The void in
her soul at that time, due to the region’s bitter cold, got filled by Maroilles.
That is why after breakfast every day, Sophie feels stronger. Stronger and ready to start her day
with a hint of innocence. Meetings and strategy plans set the pace of her morning, but in the back
of her mind, tons of Maroilles melt in her thoughts. At lunchtime, she mellows a little. Her daily
salad balances out the heavy breakfast she ate and gives her a little peace of mind. Standing up,
and pacing back and forth, Sophie eats and sets her afternoon schedule with the simple idea of
matching things together. What project - what partner - what country - what idea - what time period - what event - what territory; and since her mind lives in the fast lane, she pairs organizations up with territories, people with events, and funds with ideas the way Maroilles gets paired with Gewurztraminer wine.
So, that said, what else can you expect from a European project other than having the taste of a
tenderloin stuffed with runny Maroilles cheese? Let that simmer for a while.
JESSICA FAVAREL
1/
A- LABA brings cultural organization to work together in Europe, I’d say highlight territories and
local initiatives. For me, it’s about social inclusions, through cultural projects. We help people that
didn’t think work on cultural things, we help them to find opportunities.
B- I’m a project international project assistant, I help projects from the start to the end, with the
dissemination. I help them happening, it’s a multitasking work. It means to anticipate problems and help people to make links, relations between organizations, interpersonal relations to go well with money, papers, administration, logistic. This work is a lot about human relationships, I do it since december 2020.
C- It is a hard question to think that quick. LABA helps me to know the EU system on a large scale
and to know better the Nouvelle-Aquitaine territories. It’s really fulfilling to be able to work with different fields such as social and cultural fields. It’s a very crosscutting environment.
2/
A- French cinema, drama art and experimental movies, there’s a strong identity in the french
cinema. Abdellatif Kechiche is typical, Céline Sciamma too. Jean-Pierre Jeunet is very known everywhere, he’s not what I like the most but it’s a french cliché because foreigners say : “Ha, Amélie Poulain, the french way of life”. Cinema constructs the french identity in a good and in a bad way.
B- I’m a specialist of going to cinema. I worked a lot in cinema festivals, twice in Cannes, the most
famous festival but also in a lot of other festivals. I like the south american cinema festival, like the one in Biarritz. And I love the animated cinema, like in Annecy. But my favorite are short movies festivals, because you can see many different types of countries and styles in one day. You can laugh and cry in the same hour.
3/ The secret life of Jessica Favarel by Mathis Tessier
Jessica has never hidden her a3rac4on to Spain and its culture, but she has never told anyone
about her nightlife. Every odd day, at precisely 12:13 am, she goes to a banal tapas restaurant located near La Victoire.
Underneath the ordinary restaurant are deep tunnels leading to a huge room.
What looks like a cave is in fact a large recep4on room, where the stone walls are covered with
Hispanic tapestry. It is in this strange place that Jessica and some of her disciples dance flamenco
on wild nights. It explains her difficult mornings at the office.
1/
A- How can you describe your structure with your own eyes and perception ?
B- What are you doing in your structure ?
C- What does your structure change in you, in a personal way ?
2/
A- For you, what is specific to your country and its inhabitants ?
B- What is your speciality, or in what are you very good or very bad at ?
3/ Tell the secret life of the person next to you, if you don’t know, invent it.
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PAULINE LHERAULT
1/
A- LABA is an organization which helps people who are in creative things, in cultural fields to
develop their projects on european scale.
B- I’m helping to assess projects. I’m doing some parts of administration and coordination. I work
here since one and half year. My contract ends at the end of summer 2021.
C- I’ve learned a lot about myself and my abilities. I also met a lot of people and discovered a lot of
different aspects of the cultural, european and professional fields
2/
A- I think that french people tend to be negative and complain a lot about small stuffs in their life. There’s a lot of diversity in France, and I feel the most frenchy spirit is in the south of the country, and for me, Bordeaux is not in the south.
B- I cook a lot but not when I’m alone. So I host dinners and I gather my friends a lot. That’s my kind of speciality. Every Sunday, I tend to cook vegetables, meat or fish, I go to the market and see my local producers and chose the best seasonal dishes.
3/ The secret life of Noulina (aka Pauline Lherault) by Margaux Velez
N is for NEAR... Pauline is very close... and at the same time something separates us. A glass window that arrived during the Covid with our pass-through to communicate, exchange documents,
scissors... but we don’t use it... We prefer to cross the window, to go to the other side as we say at
home.
O is for OTHER... Pauline will soon be another Pauline, more musical, more from Bordeaux, more
feline... #FELIN #newjob
U is for UNIQUE... Pauline is Pauline, a young girl in the making
L is for LABA... the place where I met Pauline
I is for INDEPENDENT... Pauline has character, you can’t pass by her without seeing her, we notice Pauline and that’s good!
N is for NATURE... not too much eyeshadow, rather a bright lipstick and a light blush on the cheeks... hints of pink that stand out from her matte skin
A for AGAIN... still need a few days to really get to know Pauline... See you soon…
