Invisible jobs in the city
Océane Ragoucy is an architect, curator and consultant. In 2023, she lives and works between Paris and Athens. With a strategic and engaged practice in architecture, art and ecology, she explores the modes of production of architecture, the margins, the backstage of cities and the narratives of ecological issues. Her work takes the form of articles, interviews, books, exhibitions, artistic and cultural programs, public talks, collective writing initiatives and creative research projects.
With a background in cinema and a research master's in digital arts and media (Paris I-Panthéon Sorbonne), she is an architect (ENSA Paris-La Villette) and a graduate of SPEAP, Bruno Latour's experimental program in art and politics (Sciences Po). She has been an associate lecturer at ENSA Paris-Malaquais since 2022 and a thesis director at ENSCI-Les Ateliers since 2021.
– In 2021-2022, she co-curated the exhibition "La Beauté d'une ville" [The Beauty of a City] at the Pavillon de l'Arsenal in Paris, where she directed 30 filmed interviews with leading figures on aesthetic controversies and the ecological transition in Paris.
– Since 2021, she covers architecture, cities, ecology and the Anthropocene as an associate editor of the daily journal of ideas AOC [www.aoc.media]. She also writes articles for the press and chronicles on "invisible" jobs, which led her to be awarded by FAIRE, the research incubator of the Pavillon de l'Arsenal, for a project on oral history of work in Paris.
– In 2023, she was selected by the French magazine AMC as one of the outstanding young female voices in architecture in France. She also curated "Un musée dans la ville" [A museum in the city], an architecture festival with nearly 40 guests at Mucem museum in Marseille.
– In 2024, she will be awarded the residency program of the Academy of Architecture at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris.
What are the jobs of today and tomorrow? We know the Parisian "petits métiers" of the late 19th century thanks to Eugène Atget's photographs, which left their mark on the Parisian imagination. They gradually disappeared at the turn of the 20th century under the impact of industrialisation, but they are a precious testimony to the practices of the time. But did you know that there are currently contraceptive pigeon lofts managers in Paris? That Parisians can have the electromagnetic waves in their homes measured free of charge? Do you know what it is like to be a dark kitchen preparer, a graffiti eraser or a prefectural drone pilot? Did you know that there are people mapping parking spaces in Paris on foot with 360° recording equipment?
At the end of 2022, I was awarded a prize by FAIRE, the Pavillon de l'Arsenal's research incubator, for a project on oral histories of work in Paris in the 2020s. The aim is to produce a series of podcasts with people who work in 'invisible jobs', telling us about very specific uses of the city and urban space. It documents and archives the practices, gestures and everyday life of different professions that we don't know anything about. They are related to new mobility and transport, care, maintenance and infrastructure: jobs that involve the transformation of a capital city, its upkeep and maintenance.
In 2023, I am producing a series of podcasts about these jobs. The year 2024 will be dedicated to prospective research on the future occupations of the city. Current crisis are having a major impact on cities, their maintenance and construction, and the way we live and work in them. I will therefore carry out prospective, even fictional, research into the future jobs of urban professionals in the coming years, based on a survey of both the past and the future.
