The City That Never Was

This long-term project proposes a fictional rewriting of Le Havre’s history that unfolds over four years (2023-2026) as part of the “Un été au Havre” festival. The work generates an alternative version of the city at different periods through an AI system fed by municipal archives. This urban fiction infiltrates the fabric of the real city through various materializations: wall frescoes, sculptures, postcards, film productions, and exhibitions. The collaborative approach involves residents in developing this parallel memory, blurring the boundaries between documented history and speculative narrative. The project is structured in four chronological episodes spanning more than seven centuries: “The Latent Space 1895-1970” (2023), “Logistics of Memories 1971-2024” (2024), “The Truce 2025-2049” (2025), and “The House of Dreams 2049-2612” (2026).