1ST PRICE EX AEQUO – SOUPES POPULAIRES

This story began when a friend called me in February to tell me that my car burnt. I would later learn that an arsonist under the influence of hard drugs and convinced that he was chasing demons had set fire to twelve vehicles that night. For the romantic part, I shared that car with my ex, its charred carcass plays the embodiment of our love that went up in smoke…

Street food pre-existed the recent invention of the domestic kitchen, born from the development of modern confort and nuclear family households. In many places it is still part of the modus vivendi. Found in Thailand or Japan, street food possess an undeniable charm for the eyes of Europeans living in policed urban spaces. In Europe, however, it often covers up other realities, such as soup kitchens and food distribution by the Restos du Coeur.

Despite 45,000 asylum applications in 2023, the only response Europe is able to offer these new populations in need are detention camps in the shape of open-air prisons, preferably out of sight, off urban centres. The homeless, forced by their extremely precarious situation, have learnt to read the city through experience and are a little more aware of the resources available to them. But what about new arrivals? How do they survive in a space they can’t decipher?

The prohibitions of the ecological transition have left at our disposal a large number of vehicles which have been banned from the metropolises. New LPG technologies allow us to convert any of them into a hybrid vehicle, and the beauty of LPG is that you can also cook with it. Combined with LED panels working on 12V systems, we have a fleet of vehicles operating in very localised fields of action, serving as popular kitchens on every street corner.

It appears though that Brazil, where car-boot kitchens called porta-mallas are a common thing offering chùrros and hot-dogs to the night stroller, is largely ahead of us here. Only the idea here is to put the coupé, a symbol of consumerism and individualism, at the heart of social action and of an idea of a cityscape outside of commercial use.

Soupes Populaires imagines the soup kitchen as a Bangkok Night Market with a cyberpunk twist. The Audi A3 1996-2000 series sportback 1.9 TDI in metallic grey with aluminium rims could act as a swipe of lipstick to strip this symbol of extreme poverty of its pauperising image. You too come have a bowl of soup from the boot of a luxury car, refugees welcome, hospitality as not (completely) deserted these lands.

Soups are found in every kitchen. If some of them, like the french bouillabaisse, have become delicacies of choice they yet remain the archetypal popular meal. Warm or cold, blended or chunky, with fresh herbs or dry spices, vegetarian or omnivorous they are suitable for everyone.