Sakae Osugi – Anarchiste japonais

A photographic drift through Saint-Denis in the footsteps of the ghost of Osugi Sakae, the Japanese anarchist activist who is said to have made a speech there 100 years ago. A way for the artists to put the urban reality of Greater Paris under tension.

Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber travelled and photographed Saint-Denis in the footsteps of Japanese anarchist Sakae Osugi. Osugi is said to have given a speech in Saint-Denis on May Day 1923, before being expelled and murdered a few months later by Japanese military police. This book is one of the many pieces of evidence in the artists’ situationist investigation of various metropolises around the world (Osaka, Tokyo, Paris, Chongqing…), grouped together under the name of “Cartographie Dynamique”.

The text accompanying this book is the fruit of another wander, that of Marie Tesson, from Saint-Denis to the Tour Pleyel. It extends our reflection on what lies beneath the megalopolis’ many architectural layers.