Animation of a workshop in between participative science and colored wonderings together with Charlène Guillaume and Louise Raguet.

The PLANTS & COLORS workshop was given in the mark of the STUN camp, a European meeting, gathering the actors of temporary use. It was organized by the collectives Yes We Camp, Communa and Free Riga, on the Vive les Groues wasteland in Nanterre.

The specificity of the place (a 9 000 m2 wild land in the heart of the Parisian business district La Défense, growing more and more in the Grand Paris project) and its temporary status invites us to think about the temporality of the non-lasting, to the richness of the in-between spaces and to these transitory possibles.

Between talks and reflections on temporary use, on gentrification, on social and cultural projects and participative construction workshops (building a yurt, building common barbecues, making a bread oven, building a greenhouse, … ) we offered this activity.

Neighbors and STUN campers met around botanics.

Together we walked by the wild land, discovered new areas usually not explored, picked plants, extracted their colors and pigments with simple and replicable methods, painted with them and printed their shapes.

A color range emerges, offering an unusual image of the wasteland. A map is drawn, intensities glows, colors surprises us : greens (of course), but also pinks, mauves, oranges, browns, blues, … The shape of leaves and flowers is printed to allow ulterior identification and storage of the species discovered.

These collaborative manual activities are the occasion to share our knowledges on botanics, to question the use of these plants (medicinal, nutritional, for the ecosystem) and to discover the large natural diversity of a space usually considered as inhospitable because of its urban position (non natural) and « waste » status.