Stories Shaped by Villa Albertine 

What happens when, virtually overnight, rockets start launching just a few miles—or even a few yards—from your home?

In southern Texas, on the Mexican border, the explosive growth of SpaceX and Starbase, a new city shaped by Elon Musk, is upending everyday life. Rocket launches, explosions, pollution, and road and beach closures have become part of daily life for residents of one of the poorest regions in the country, now seeing an influx of tech executives and SpaceX enthusiasts. The richest man on the planet’s dream of reaching Mars is leaving its mark on both the land and the people who live there.

Fabien Benoit chronicles this relentless expansion day by day. Ordinary residents, SpaceX opponents, elected officials, and devotees of the celebrity entrepreneur all tell, in their own ways, the story of a world undergoing profound change. Through intimate, deeply human storytelling, Benoit portrays an America blinded by the pursuit of conquest and power, gripped by anti-immigration fervor, and calls into question the nation’s founding myths.

2025 Villa Albertine resident Fabien Benoit is a journalist and documentary filmmaker specializing in new technologies. He is also the author of The Valley: A Political History of Silicon Valley (Les Arènes, 2019), Techno-Struggles: An Investigation into Those Who Resist Technology (Seuil, 2022, with Nicolas Celnik), and The Water Grabbers: An Investigation into the Companies Taking Control of Our Water (Les Liens qui libèrent, 2026, with Nicolas Celnik).

In the remote Yup’ik village of Quinhagak, Alaska, journalist Charlotte Fauve and archaeologist Claire Houmard spent a month taking part in “rescue” archaeological excavations. In this “emergency” journal, Charlotte Fauve recounts her days of digging, joined by the local community in a race against time, turfs, and waves. In this immersion into daily excavations and the lives of villagers, Claire Houmard brings her scientific perspective, placing each discovery within the millennia-long history of the Yup’ik people.

For the authors, this is an effort to capture the past—partly destroyed by colonization and now threatened by climate change—before it disappears for good. It is a fight against ecological and social collapse, a struggle against the Usteq: the erosion of the world.

2023 Villa Albertine resident Charlotte Fauve is a journalist at Télérama and an author. She has contributed to several books and documentaries on landscapes and gardens, including Botaniste (Grasset, 2019, with Marc Jeanson).

Claire Houmard is an archaeologist affiliated with the Marie and Louis Pasteur University and participated in a Villa Albertine residency in 2023. Since 2022, she has led the “Yup’ik” project, supported by the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and Villa Albertine.

The residencies of Claire Houmard and Charlotte Fauve in Alaska were conducted with the support of the Engie Foundation.

When July comes, Léa Hirschfeld takes her brother to Zeno, a summer camp like no other, in Vermont. There, Anton, an unconventional young man, blends into a group where differences related to disabilities have been erased to make way for more direct and equal relationships.

The stays at Zeno, in the heart of magnificent nature, promise unforgettable summers and formative experiences for Anton and Léa, centered around shared artistic projects. As her brother gains more independence, Léa undergoes an inner transformation: is there really a world she could share with him? A world where the word “brother,” which had long been associated with absence and pain, would finally make sense?

A sensitive and intimate narrative about disability, Zeno is also the story of a little sister whose life has been deeply impacted by her brother’s.

2023 Villa Albertine resident Léa Hirschfeld is the creator of Décalés, a podcast featuring intimate discussions that explore mental, physical, and psychological disabilities through the lens of family relationships and cultural influences. Zeno is her first book.

Science-fiction writer Alain Damasio was irresistibly drawn to Silicon Valley, at the heart of the new technologies that shape our lives. In Vallée du silicium, he observes and takes it in, being jostled by a reality he didn’t anticipate. Readers follow his deep reflections on how technology shapes us; how it penetrates and controls our bodies;  how it supplants and reinvents our intelligence; and how it deforms and reconstructs our relationship to the world, to others, and to ourselves. From the headquarters of Apple, “the Mecca of the Mac,” to San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, Alain Damasio examines the metaverse, the generalization of AI, and the burgeoning empire of autonomous cars, to draw out a political reading of the times and let us understand the new era that await us.

Alain Damasio is the author of numerous science fiction novels and short stories, including La Horde du Contrevent (La Volte, 2004, Grand prix de l’Imaginaire 2006), which has sold 500,000 copies, and Les Furtifs (La Volte, 2019, Prix du Meilleur livre Lire and Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire).

Deeply inspired by her residency in Marfa, Texas and the writings of Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881), a French revolutionary thinker, Léa Bismuth develops in her new spatial literary project a story of politics, poetry, and the environment. In Marfa, she pointedly looks up at the clear starry sky and, as Blanqui once did, wonders if the cosmos could be a potential means for political emancipation. This theme guides her story, written as both a travel diary and a political essay.  

The book travels between present day Marfa and Brittany, poking at the future of “astrocapitalism,” in a time where our earthly orbit is brimming with artificial satellites. She shows the politico-environmental importance of space exploration and colonization, as well as the crucial role of the artist in such a context.  

Léa Bismuth produces exhibitions based on a collective writing method. She has curated many art centers, museums, festivals, galleries, and art schools, including Labanque (Béthune), Les Tanneries (Amilly), Musée Delacroix (Paris), image/imatge (Orthez), CAC La Traverse (Alfortville), Rencontres d’Arles (Arles), Drawing Lab (Paris), BAL (Paris), and Nouvelles Vagues at Palais de Tokyo (Paris). Between 2006 and 2018, she featured regularly in Art Press. Her most recent writings have been published by the likes of Actes Sud, Hatje Cantz, Loco, and the online newspaper, AOC. Bismuth also lectures at several art schools (including the École des Arts de la Sorbonne).

Jump into 1925 New York City with Pierre Emmanuel Lyet’s stunning illustrated comic book, De l’autre côté de la pluie.

During his Villa Albertine residency in New York, Lyet traced the footsteps of French immigrants to the United States. The result is a touching story brought to life through his colorful, energetic illustrations. We follow a young American girl and the encounter with her grandmother, who arrived in the United States from France as a little girl herself. In this whimsical work, readers are transported between the bustling streets of 1925 New York and the city’s modern-day counterpart, showcasing its rich history, architecture, and cultural diversity.

Perfect for readers of all ages, this comic book is both a visual journey and an emotional one, celebrating heritage, history, and the enduring spirit of the city.

A graduate from the École supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris, Pierre-Emmanuel Lyet is an animated film director, illustrator, and art director. His films, Parade, Peter and the Wolf, and La Nuit américaine d’Angélique (which was nominated in the Best Animated Film category at the 2016 Césars) have won awards at numerous film festivals, including Annecy, Berlin, and Zagreb. His drawings are regularly published in magazines and newspapers in France (Télérama, Libération, Le Monde) and abroad (Süddeutsche Zeitung, L.A Times), featured in youth literature, and shown at galleries.

Following a rich residency in Los Angeles where she immersed herself in the exploration of the Los Angeles River and the interconnections of the urban landscapes with nature, Céline Minard constructs a striking fictional universe, deeply rooted in the realities we inhabit. In her latest work, Tovaangar, she presents a world where creatures, vegetation, concrete, and technology converge and interact. She envisions a possible future for Los Angeles now known as Hidden. In this world, humanity no longer occupies the central position, and new rules slowly begin to take hold, telling an intriguing tale of nature, technology, and a recycled world which offers a profound reflection on our present-day.

After a master’s in philosophy and seven years working at a bookstore, Céline Minard decided to go into writing at the age of thirty-three. She has published twelve books over two decades, all of them varying in tone and form. She was awarded the Franz-Hessel Prize for So Long, Luise, the Prix du Livre Inter for Faillir être flingué, the Special Mention of the Wepler Prize for Bastard Battle, the Zadig and Voltaire Prize for Bacchantes, and the Grand Prix de l’imaginaire for Plasmas.

She is a Knight of the French Order of Arts and Letters.

During her fall 2023 residency in Yellowstone National Park in California, Alice Chemama explored the vast landscapes of Yellowstone National Park to study the challenges of coexistence between humans and grizzlies.

From this experience, she created a graphic novel, Grizzly Jam, set to be published in 2025 by Dargaud.

Based on dozens of testimonies from the inhabitants of “Bear Country” (hikers, caretakers, hunters, and trackers), Grizzly Jam portrays a complex coexistence marked by fascination, caution, and adaptation.

During her December 2021 – February 2022 Villa Albertine residency in San Francisco, Hélène Giannecchini explored California’s queer history through unpublished photographic archives.

This work inspired Un désir démesuré d’amitié, a novel that examines friendship not only as an emotional bond but as a political and ethical principle that helps deconstruct social relationships and highlight marginalized stories.

It was published in August 2024 by Éditions du Seuil.

At the end of his 2024 residency in Los Angeles, author, podcaster, and filmmaker Jamal Ouazzani published his first essay, Amour, and created the third season of JINS, a leading podcast on the sexualities, gender identities, and spiritualities of Arab and/or Muslim people.

Focused on the representation of Arab and Muslim bodies and identities in American cinema, this English-language series is the result of research and interviews conducted during his Villa Albertine residency. Using a feminist, intersectional, and inclusive approach, Jamal Ouazzani examines the stereotypes in cinema.

At the conclusion of his residency, the Arab World Institute additionally hosted a launch event for his essay Amour, in partnership with Villa Albertine. The institution will also host an audio exhibition of the JINS podcast.

Amour was published by Editions Leduc in 2024.