From our special envoy in astral displacement to Meschers,
On the corkboard, “requests” and “offers” are pinned. One offers tantric massages, another is looking for help to create his website in WordPress. One offers “a walk on the beach and positive listening”, another hopes to find someone to draw the cards for him. Since 1977, the space of possibilities, Meschers campsite (Charente-Maritime), on the Gironde estuary, keeps the spirit alive new age for “learning, participative and sustainable” holidays.
Surrounded by giant four-star campsites, where gleaming mobile homes and formatted activities are lined up, the Espace despossibles smells good of the summer camp of the 1970s. mostly buildings made of odds and ends, second-hand tents and aging mobile homes. At the self-catering restaurant, volunteers are in charge of the dishes. A gang of teenagers heckle while cleaning the toilets. Everyone pitches in. In addition to its post-1968 community spirit, the place is especially famous for its workshops, led by volunteer “proponents”. There are 90 per day to choose from: “voice yoga”, “tango”, “meditative tantra”, “boxing and self-confidence”, “mindfulness meditation”, etc. And the essential courses in pottery, dance, improv theater and other creative workshops.
A legacy from 1929 and 1968
“Here, we believe in education. The “proponents” arrive with their knowledge and come to transmit, explains Yves Donnars, trained psychologist, and master of the place since its creation. When we started, we were a little naive and it was going all over the place. Today, our values are the same but the practices have changed, with less bodily and emotional experimentation and more work on oneself through artistic fields. »
After a trip to the United States in 1968 where he discovered the New Age movement in a camp where “we develop techniques that go beyond psychoanalysis”, Yves Donnars seeks “with friends” to create the equivalent in Paris. The band, full of goodwill but with empty pockets, retreats to this land owned by Yves’ mother. “My grandfather had bought it in 1929 to make it a seaside resort. My mother inherited it when she was young and made it a field of trees…”
Trees and pseudosciences
Today, the place still combines its two heritages. Very green and airy compared to neighboring campsites (400 people welcomed where such a space usually accommodates triple), the Espace despossibles remains a vacation spot. “There are people who just want a little creative vacation and who are not interested in other proposals”, admits Yves without regret.
If some workshop proposals – such as “Hidden Emotions and Somatizations” or “Sylvotherapy” – can make you smile if you are not very receptive to pseudosciences, most of the activities of the Space work above all on the “development staff “. “When we started, we thought it was enough to unburden ourselves of our emotions to be relieved and for things to get better, to abandon our social self to heal the intimate self,” smiles Yves. Over time, we saw that what worked was socialization. We are less about our problems and more about our resources. »
” Would you like a hug ? »
However, the Space of Possibilities is not an enchanted island. “Here, we are about personal development and knowing how to listen to your deep and intimate self, your desires and desires. It’s all well and good, but it’s not always compatible with living together and benevolence,” laughs Bernard, who struggles to plan the maintenance of the biodynamic vegetable garden. We find more or less the same problems here as in any community, even if sometimes we come across a barefoot young man who offers us cuddle therapy with a good-natured smile.
To the aging regulars of Space have been added people in their forties and their children, many of whom seem suspicious of National Education and the media system, retirees and grandchildren, and a slew of teenagers, more or less receptive to the philosophy of the place, and sometimes prefers the binge drinking on the beach at body painting on the island of the five senses. There are also clashes, more or less serious, in this Space where we are not really a fan of authority and administrative constraints. Thus, regulars regularly desert the place when a new regulatory instruction occurs. Latest episode: anti-Covid vaccination and wearing a mandatory mask. Before that, the 1990s were a turning point. A time when the “new body-mind approaches” were considered suspect.
“I saw my first vulva at a pottery class”
Star in spite of himself of the novel by Michel Houellebecq, Elementary particles, released in 1998, The Space of Possibilities is described there as a place of debauchery where sexual freedom would have led to excesses such as paedocriminality. The author was a faithful of the place which, even today, is the object of fantasies. “When we talk about it with friends who don’t know the place, they imagine us naked dancing on full moon evenings, laments René, who has been visiting the Space for forty years. Of course, there was a time when nudity was more accepted and couples questioned bourgeois sexual fidelity. But today, we mostly have old couples… bourgeois. I go to the workshop on polyamory, but it’s very theoretical in fact, you know. »
“First AIDS and then a certain puritanism calmed things down,” says another regular. “You shouldn’t imagine endless orgies in the 1970s either, cuts another faithful of the place. There were naturists and a few swingers, but it wasn’t Sodom and Gomorrah either. “A young man in his forties who had gone to Espace in his youth remembers workshops “naked or dressed” depending on the day: “once I made a mistake when reading the schedule… Well, I saw my first vulva in a pottery class at l’Espace when I was 14 years old. In full touch with the times, the Space now offers workshops on consent as well as on how to manage your Instagram account to avoid harassment and body shaming.
How it is possible ?
At the end of July, a young camper was the victim of a serious sexual assault while setting up her tent. The case, under investigation, upset Yves Donnars who, for the sake of transparency, revealed the alleged facts in front of dumbfounded campers. A psychodrama ensued, dividing the members of the Space of Possibilities. Some, shocked of course, refused to take responsibility for the event: “Rapes are everywhere. Here, we are rather preserved, we are not going to change our way of doing things for an isolated drama. Others, on the contrary, believe that it is the collective responsibility to do better in terms of safety and care so that their vacation spot is a bubble “that escapes the statistics”.
At the end of July, a young camper was the victim of a serious sexual assault while setting up her tent. The case, under investigation, upset Yves Donnars who, for the sake of transparency, revealed the alleged facts in front of dumbfounded campers. A psychodrama ensued, dividing the members of the Space of Possibilities. Some, shocked of course, refused to take responsibility for the event: “Rapes are everywhere. Here, we are rather preserved, we are not going to change our way of doing things for an isolated drama. Others, on the contrary, believe that it is the collective responsibility to do better in terms of security and attention so that their vacation spot is a bubble “that escapes the statistics”.