How can you be in three places at once? Residents from three municipalities have commissioned an artwork centred on the Pont Rouchaud, a site unique both geographically and politically. This stone bridge serves as a symbolic and physical link between several tiers of local government.
The Pont Rouchaud lies at the intersection of three municipalities and three Departments: Roussines in Charente, Maisonnais-sur-Tardoire in Haute-Vienne, and Busserolles in Dordogne. This meeting point of the three former regions – Poitou-Charentes, Limousin, and Aquitaine – has, since the territorial reform of 2015, become the geographical centre of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. The symbolic position of the Pont Rouchaud raises important questions concerning the merging of the regions: the isolation of territories within an immense new region and the centralisation of political decision-making.
Gatherings organised among the commissioners provide an opportunity to share narratives, whether drawn from collective history or from individual lives. A rich variety of themes emerge, reflecting the richness of the territory.
These are the stories gathered by the scriptwriter and sound artist Marc Pichelin, together with illustrators Guillaume Guerse and Yannick Robert. From this collection of stories, legends, testimonies, sketches and sounds, the authors are creating a graphic novel that seeks to project the distinctive identity of this point in Nouvelle-Aquitaine beyond its borders, recounting the lives of local people and their relationship to rural life, the landscape, places and environments.
