SIPKES. Vintage Salinity Machine. 70x85cm. Silver Print.

THIRD MOVEMENT - back to the slow tempo

VI.  HOUSING - ACT II 'THE LAST ONE’

#20 The earth trembles
Little is said about the other delta. The Plaine de la Crau, the word means 'stony' in provençal, is the dried paleo-delta of the Durance, a triangle of land covering an areasurface area of six hundred square kilometers versus one thousand fou hundred and fifty of the Camargue. For four thousand years the transhumance of sheep between the mountains and this plain has created a sole steppe environment. It is the only remaining arid steppe in Europe. Whilst I walk here, about ninety suqre kilomters are left, divided into a pile of private and public plots. You walk across a wide, empty basin, where the river’s egg shaped cobble stones strangely remained in place for 2 million years. ten to fourty centimeters in width, covered in lichens, they symbiotically act as a vector of heat and humidity for such species that live there.

#21 A storm of stone
Invoked by the Pan Celts and the Gauls, the Crau plain belongs to a more ancient mythology than that of the Greek temples. It is best understood as the tenth of Heracles' labours in bringing Geryon's herd back across the plain. Wounded in the knee, Heracles faces the Ligurians with no weapons to defend himself. Zeus, takes pity on his weeping and covers the surface with a shower of stones. The proof is still there on earth and in the sky, where Zeus has placed the constellation 'Heracles fighting the Ligurians'. The Greeks in turn must have their tellings from their ancients  and for hundreds of years this story protected the exact composition of these stones on the river bed, untill we stopped transmitting their story.

#22 The water that flows through it
Barely a metre below the surface  lies a phreatic underground that has been used as a water reservoir for the region since the 16th century. During the dry season, irrigation of part of the plain replenishes this water table. In a well-preserved balance, until the military-industrial and agricultural settlements of the twentieth century damaged the phreatic strata.

#23 A wild garden
The Arles-Fos-Marseille motorway marks the border between the arid steppe of the Crau and the Camargue, along it the Viqueirat marshes nature reserve releases water of the phreatic structure, causing for a oasitic grandure of marsh plants. On the motorway, industrial traffic and travellers are in a trance watching the imposing factories schimmer on the horizon in a plain,
it would seem too flat to be noticed.

#24 The gladiator is dying
The Crau Cricket is a little soldier fighting for his life. His bulging torso is covered in gladiatorial armour. There are only three breeding grounds left on the plain. Without political dispensation, it is impossible to pass because of this endemic species on the brink of extinction. A true gladiator.

Derogation to enter, cages for endemic locusts and military area



- last arid steppe of Europe

Otello Badan - Former gardian of the Camargue

First cameras in the Réserve de la Scamandre