La Cordée – Les Faufilées

In the beginning, there was hemp! Or rather, we should say, hemp thread. The one that Les Faufilées manipulate at the Royal Theatre of La Monnaie, the Brussels Opera House, where the idea of La Cordée garden was born, and which for centuries served on ships departing to discover the world.

Where does it come from? From a plant, of course! Now replaced by plastic, hemp is nonetheless infinitely more noble. In La Cordée, the threads mingle in the garden until they return to their original plant state. Fibers, dyes, tannins… this is an ancestral plant palette honoring the plants that have accompanied us in our daily lives for centuries.

Telling the story of an island that provides textiles, the hemp thread escapes there, into its natural environment, and guides the visitor who will land there. Echoing the more artificial and long-maintained landscape by human hands, the thread becomes a net. It climbs the bark until it tickles the treetops. It meets its mother plant and slips into all the layers. It is the collective members who themselves braided, with their methodical and repeated gestures, all the mesh that composes La Cordée.

Nets for climbing, walking, playing, to evoke: the world of boatmen, that of islands, the inextricable links between land and water. To play with form and possibilities. To dream while perched! The plant offers us the thread and takes us on this boat with a rooted mast and a vegetalized bow. In this small island landscape of the Hortillonnages d’Amiens, Les Faufilées also wanted to evoke the care that this extraordinary site requires; like the stitches of a net that need to be repaired, the banks are adorned with textile fibers to protect against erosion that eats away at its edges. The loop is closed!

From the ground to the foliage, La Cordée invites you on a playful and custom-woven journey. Board the ship!