Making East London: An Interview with Justinien Tribillon

For V&A East’s New Work programme of commissions, Justinien Tribillon has developed a new film exploring the hidden practice of working ‘on the sly’. Looking closely at makers, workshops and industrial spaces in East London, the commission reflects on manual skill, working-class culture,  and resourcefulness. In this interview, Tribillon discusses the ideas behind the work, his research into informal making practices, and how filming workers’ hands became a way to examine rhythm, labour, and creativity. 

How would you describe your practice and the questions or ideas that generally guide your work?

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what my practice is, and I keep coming back to that question regularly. I do not necessarily identify as an artist, although if being called an artist means having the opportunity to develop work and research, then I am happy with that. I followed a very serious higher education path. I was probably meant to work in public administration in France, or for a local authority somewhere. That was what I had in mind when I was 20. But then life happens, and with time I progressively moved towards architecture as a subject of interest. I found architecture fascinating, but I did not want to completely retrain to become a practicing architect, so I remained on the sidelines of the discipline, talking with architects a lot but not being one myself.

I am usually more of a writer. I am also an educator, and I lecture in an art school in Paris. I am certainly an editor as well. My main medium of expression would be writing, and then teaching, if teaching counts as a medium of expression. The topics I am interested in are urban studies, urban planning, and architecture. I did a PhD in urban studies at University College London, and this has been my ongoing subject of interest for many years. The reason for that is that by looking at cities, urban planning and spatial planning more generally, you can touch on almost every aspect of human culture.

Were there any figures or experiences that inspired how you might have a creative life and career?

When I revisit my early adult years, I realise I had always been interested in writing, but I had not imagined it as my main medium of expression. During an internship in a big corporation, I realised I was good at it. I was ghost-writing for my boss, and my boss told me I was good at writing. So, I quit and tried to become a journalist. Journalism evolved into editing, and editing then evolved into something different again.

What I like to do is fall in love with a topic. I might find something strange or enticing, and then I want to dig into it. The medium depends on the opportunity. Sometimes there is an opportunity to make a book, sometimes a film, sometimes a curatorial programme.

Could you describe your commission for V&A East?

The commission engages with the idea of working on the sly, which is my translation of the French word perruque. In French, perruque literally means ‘wig’, but here it is a metaphor. It describes the practice of crafting or repairing objects for oneself at the workplace, using the tools of the workplace, often with offcuts or leftover materials.

It is about how manual workers take some time for themselves to make objects for themselves while they are at work. I did a curatorial residency dedicated to that subject two years ago. What I find interesting is both how manual workers become designers, and how working on the sly can be a form of resistance through making. There is a lot of ambivalence in that practice.

It is a complicated topic to research because there are no archives dedicated to these works. There is no museum collection dedicated to them. It is not really an established topic, although a couple of books have been written about it. It is a very secretive practice, but it is also everywhere and, at least in some sense, universal.

My starting point is that anybody who has access to a machine and the knowledge of how to operate it will, when they have a bit of time, make something. That could range from a very small, playful sculpture made to pass the time, to something much more ambitious. One of my favourite examples is someone who made airplanes on the sly. That story has been corroborated by several sources, and one of my ambitions over the coming months is to find that person and see the airplane.

For this film, I wanted to find examples of people working on the sly in East London and film them. I wanted to film them making objects as part of their normal day job, and then film them making objects for themselves in the workplace.

What I imagined, and what has been confirmed by the first days of shooting, is that the hand gestures are often different. When people are making objects as part of their day job, the gestures can be large, repetitive and repeated again and again. When people are making something for themselves, they often work on smaller objects. They work more slowly and carefully. I hope the film reflects those differences in rhythm, pace, and spatial expression. The film will focus exclusively on workers’ hands.

Could you talk about the research process and some of the challenges you encountered?

I worked with a researcher, George Kafka, who assisted me in developing the project. Initially, we started with desk research, but that did not work at all. So, I asked George to literally go around industrial estates in East London and knock on doors. He developed a strategy to identify workshops that seemed more promising than others. Metal workshops, for example, are often very good places to look, because when you have access to large machines, you have access to tools that people would never have at home. That creates more opportunities for working on the sly.

Woodworking is slightly different. Of course, it is better to make something in a proper wood workshop with all the tools available, but you can arguably do woodwork at home in a shed more easily than you can do metalwork. So, George went around knocking on doors and trying to find examples.

After that, I went back to some of the spaces several times. I started writing down stories, making connections with people, and asking whether we could return with a small film crew to film them.

It is quite tricky. Several people who initially seemed willing either pulled out or were asked to withdraw by management. This is my first time using film. Usually I write, or sometimes use photography, but this is my first time working with this medium. Even when you arrive with a small camera, it is still invasive.

Here, we are trying to film a practice that is quite secretive. The second issue is that when you knock on doors in workshops or small factories, it is usually management who comes to speak to you first. That can make the process more complicated.

For this project, I worked with filmmaker Alice Doušová. I am not holding the camera myself, so I am also learning how to collaborate in that way. I delegated part of the initial research phase to George, and worked with Alice on the film. The main medium is film, but I am not in charge of the technical side. I do not have the technical knowledge to handle that part. So the project is also about collaboration, and about understanding what my role is within it.

Have you noticed differences between this practice in a French or Parisian setting and in London?

In France, working on the sly is part of working-class culture. People are often quite happy to show it off and to brag about it. There is a culture of being a bit cheeky, of stealing a little time and resources from the boss. In the UK, I think that culture exists too, but it is much more discreet. That is connected to the social histories of the two countries, the economic contexts, and the histories of unionisation and worker protection. What is interesting is that if you take a very small practice, something that looks innocent, you can expand it and reveal a hundred years of social history, including struggles for social equality and workers’ rights.

It is also important to say that, although this is true in Paris and France as well, much of the industrial heritage has disappeared, especially in London. Yet I have still been surprised by how many workshops and craftspeople continue to exist here. I am talking not only about artists, but about craftspeople making objects that are used in construction sites and other industries. That world still exists in London.

What is next for the project?

After this film, my ambition is to continue and formalise this collection. I have been hearing stories here and there, but I now want to record them much more systematically. Many of the people who hold these stories are older, so I want to capture their testimonies, memories and objects before they disappear. I want to collect these stories and objects much more thoroughly. Sometimes people do not understand what I am talking about at first, but once they do, the stories start to come out. Someone might say, “Oh yes, give me a minute,” and then come back with a small key ring their father made because he worked on fighter jets in France and had access to a laser cutter in the 1970s. These objects open up whole lives and histories.

This part of hearing stories and meeting people was the most meaningful experience about making this work. I am a curator and educator. I do not have many daily connections with people who work in workshops, factories, or garages. I do not come from a working-class background myself. But, like many of us, I have grandparents who did, so this project is also a way to reconnect with that part of my family history.

More generally, it is incredibly enriching to gather life stories through objects and practices. It is also a chance to discover trades and practices that I did not know anything about. We are often very disconnected from the actual work of crafting the objects that go into making buildings.

Rekindling that connection across the different scales of architecture has been very enriching for me, both for this specific research and for my work as an educator with future designers, artists and architects. I come from a critical and intellectual background. I approach things through books all the time. It has been valuable to stop doing that for a while, and to approach things through where they physically come from, and through their materiality.

What do you hope people will take away from encountering the work?

I would love people to take away a sense of how skillful people are. We live in a world where many of us are less and less connected to people who do manual work. That is connected to class and social status, and to the fact that there are fewer spaces for different social groups to encounter one another.

If you work in an office, to put it simply, you may not know many people who make objects on a daily basis. I hope this work can reconnect audiences with how skillful manufacturers, craftspeople and manual workers are.

This project is an homage to that creativity, and to working-class culture and the stories of the past. The landscape of manufacturing has changed in France, the UK and Europe more broadly, but that history is not very far away. It is important to keep that connection to manufacturing in all aspects of its history.

Interview edited by Miri Ahn