Considering Calais #4

PUBLIC WORKSHOP ON MARCH 8TH FROM 6:30PM TO 8:30PM Public workshop set up by Pérou - Pôle d'Exploration des Ressources urbaines
(Urban resources exploration pole)
 at the Pavillon
de l'Arsenal 



Every other Tuesday, from 6:30pm to 8:30pm, PEROU sets up its “Public workshop” at the Pavillon de l'Arsenal, in order to exchange new stories about Calais, this city in the making, and the world to come. Another one of its purposes is to be on the side of creation, and to share it, and thus to devise terms and acts of a renewed policy of hospitality.

 "At PEROU, "altered state", we keep record, to the extreme, of how much folly rules.
Since Monday, twenty odd employees of Sogéa, a construction company from Calais, has demolished buildings and the debris are being collected by backhoe loaders and tractor-trailers. Cost of the operation: 15 000 euros a day for this “humanitarian operation”. Since the end of October, 18 units of the State’s mobile forces are in the Pas-de-Calais for backup (about 1 000 people), with a cost of about 150 000 euros a day, of which 50 000 go to hotel accommodation (only two units are in their quarters); this adds up to 18 million euros since the beginning of this “effort to promote peace”. In 2015, another 18 million euros (of which 15 million came from Great Britain) went to “securing” the port of Calais (fences, surveillance cameras, etc); 51 million (of which 20 million came from Great Britain) were necessary to “secure” the Channel tunnel. To set up the Jules Ferry Centre, and for it to be functional (daytime reception, 500 showers a day, 2 500 meals) and to set up the facilities in the Jungle (112 water-points, 60 chemical latrines, 6 garbage containers, a public lighting system, garbage collection), it cost 18 million euros a year, of which 7 million came from european funds. To set up a Temporary Accommodation Centre with 1 500 places made out of containers with no water, 25 million euros were used over a period of a year, in other words, 16 800 euros per person. As a compensatory measure, Calais’ municipality obtained enough resources to build the theme park “Heroic land” (which cost 275 million euros), to turn Calais into a tourist destination and no longer a zone of passage. To date, Eurotunnel is asking of the State 29 millions euros in compensation for revenue losses, not to mention the demands of the Calais district contractors who will demonstrate next Monday in the streets of Paris. Fortunately, Great Britain has just announced that 22 million euros will be sent to France to continue these efforts.
At PEROU, we cherish the idea that building is better than destroying, as an answer to what is happening. With a certain light-headedness, we imagine ourselves raising the 450 million euros at stake to finally get to work inside the slum and the city, thus “reinventing Calais”.
Pérou - Pôle d'Exploration des Ressources urbaines (Urban resources exploration pole)