#porteouverte by Oliver Hansen

porteouverte

By Suite20Seven

TERROR

Paris has suffered its worst attack since are incalculable. Multiple shootings an finger of blame is pointing at the Islam

Scores of people have been killed in the French capital, Paris. Violence across the French capital has left the city dozens reported killed at a rock concert venue. Attacks also took place at restaurants arrondissements of the city

French President Francois Hol ended. He has declared a state

IN PARIS

e the Second World War, and the consequences nd bombings have left 129 people dead, and the mic State.

d in multiple gun and bomb attacks stunned, with in the 10th and 11th

llande attended the concert hall shortly after the attack of emergency. 13/11/15

n Australian, Bulgarian and a Dutchman go to Paris together… This is not the start of a bad joke! This is the legitimate account of experiencing a supposedly antagonistic culture.

Paris. A city characterized by its introverted population and general coarseness towards foreigners. Entering this metropolitan hub as the ‘Australian Artist’, camera in hand, I plan to document the aftermath of the attacks on the Bataclan and how the community has sustained the recent tragedies. I’m here with two others, both from vastly different backgrounds to my own. ‘Mark’, the Dutchman is a world traveler on one last trip before he heads home to Amsterdam to begin a career in aviation whilst ‘Anton’, the Bulgarian is a statistical analyst with a weekend of work and a desire to experience what Paris has to offer. From the outset it is clear we have a real melting pot of characters.

As mentioned previously Mark is a seasoned traveler, he has lived in multiple countries around the world and made many, many friends along the way. The first thing you are told about going to France is “the French are selfish and do not have any time for anyone besides themselves”. Before we arrived in Paris, Mark had told us he had met a girl whilst travelling in Canada and she said we could stay in her apartment in the heart of Paris for the weekend. What an amazing offer, free accommodation in the heart of Paris, what an act of kindness. My pre conceived idea of staying with this woman was that we would be sleeping on the floor, with hopefully a blanket, if not we would make do; it would be enough to suffice our needs as weary travelers. As we arrive into Paris via the Eurostar, Mark goes onto tell us that his friend is actually staying in Manchester, England over the weekend and that she had left us the keys to her apartment. Let me ask you this, “Would you open up your apartment to a friend whilst you were in a foreign country, for no exchange of currency?” “What if they were to bring random travelers with them that you’ve never meet before?” I think the overall answer to the first question would be a resounding “NO!” Remember also that we are in France, a culture portrayed as supposedly unfriendly and unaccommodating. We arrive in the apartment and it is on the top floor of an apartment block, a mere 2 minute walk from the Eiffel Tower. Now I come from Australia, a country built on the concept of “mateship” and “helping your fellow man out” however here is this woman putting me to shame. We unpack our stuff and find a note on the fridge saying, “enjoy your stay and please help yourself to anything”. This woman is the kindest person I’ve ever come into contact with and I haven’t even met her yet. I search for an explanation for such a show of kindness and then it clicks in my head. “This must be an ex-lover of Mark” or at least someone he used to live with.

Mark goes on to say that he met her in a hostel whilst travelling through Toronto, Canada. He tells us he was “going hiking for the day and invited her.” Mark stops. We look at him curiously waiting to hear the rest of the story… “That’s it?” we ask, “That’s it” says Mark, smiling bashfully. This woman, after meeting him only once in a foreign country, has opened her home to Mark and two strangers. After meeting him only once! We were perplexed, this woman, this French women had done this for us; surely the negative stereotype of the French must be faulty. It is early days though, this is one woman in a country of a couple of million. Maybe she is one good egg? At this stage we don’t know. All we can do is go out and immerse ourselves in this city and see for ourselves if the stereotype is true.

We head out into the streets to explore Paris and there are people smiling back at us. We become lost and people offer to help us. This is the friendliest country I have ever been to. People everywhere are smiling and helping one another. This stereotype of an abrasive society and culture does indeed appear to be false. But then I remember back to what happened in this very city a few short months before I arrived; maybe this event has had some sort of effect on the general vibe of this city, perhaps not. All I know for sure is that there is wave of positive energy flowing through this city that seems to be connecting locals and tourists alike. We as a society always seem to focus on the negative aspects of the world. What’s going wrong? Who did you wrong? What don’t you have? This negative energy is contagious and we as human beings seem to thrive on it. But this is what makes this trip so interesting to me, not only as an artist but also as a person. I’m experiencing this with an East European, and a North Western European. Two vastly different cultures to my own. Throughout my travels in Hungary I developed an understanding of Eastern European people and have accordingly formed a hypothesis based upon my observations: “The majority of Eastern European people have had tougher upbringings to that of myself, and thus have developed a more jaded view on the world, compared to me.” If I may reference the Australian National Anthem: “Australians all let us rejoice, For we are young and free. “ I feel like Mark has had a similar ‘blessed’ upbringing to that of myself and thus he has a similar philosophy towards life. This clash and contrast of styles and ideas, manifested itself in an intense conversation between myself, Anton and Mark.

I can say at this point of the trip tension was building, as it usually does when you go away with new people or even old friends. I solemnly believe we as humans are solitary creatures. We enjoy our time alone, but we need this combustion of fireworks and in essence this butting of heads to happen with the people we meet in order to grow and develop new ideas. Spending two days straight with someone else or multiple people can become quite intense and hard to deal with and tension was building with every passing second. An eruption of emotion was due at any moment and being the artist that I am, I felt the best thing to do was to provoke the situation and then sit back and observe. The tension was clear between Anton and Mark, two people with varying ideas, not only with regards to their expectations of Paris but also their concepts and ideologies of life. Anton, born from a rougher life in Bulgaria has had to work significantly harder in order to escape from the routine and preconceived idea of what your life is supposed to be. Mark on the other hand has had somewhat of an easier upbringing. Mark himself noted that “up until I moved to London, my life pretty much went according to plan, a good family, did well in school, and went straight to university”. It is at that point that Mark met Anton, at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Just when the tension in the room was so palpable you could cut it with a knife, Anton said the words, “I hated you when I first met you, Mark.” If the room had a temperature gauge, I feel as if it would have read 150 degrees centigrade at this point. Anton goes on to say, “I’d often want to say to you ‘let the adults talk’. “

This struck a chord not only with Mark, but also with me as well; I have often been accused of a similar thing, I still have the naivety of a child. But this glitter, this glint in my eyes is not due to lack of ill hearted experience. I’ve lost friends in car accidents, I’ve watched my family fall apart, I’ve had my heart broken half way around the world. If anything I have an excuse to be the most jaded, sad person alive. But I CHOOSE not to be. It is my belief that we as people have a choice to either pass on good energy or bad energy. As fate would have it, it is a lot easier to pass on negative energy than it is to pass on good. Let me explain by articulating an example for you - you’re out there in the world and someone says something negative to you. You have two choices here. 1. Go and say something negative to someone else, to in theory rid yourself of this negative energy by passing it on to another person, in essence embracing the ‘eye for an eye’ mentality. 2. Let it float over the top of your head. Now the second option is a lot harder to do isn’t it? But yet this is how I try to live my life. I like to view the world from the third person... A fly on the wall. In the given example my brain would work as such. Analyze the situation *This person said something mean to me/tried to cut me down *Why is this person doing this? *Is there something wrong at home? *Has something happened to them? *Is this just a chain reaction from somewhere else? *Am I going to continue this bad energy? *No, let’s break it here!

In Australia we have a term called “Tall Poppy Syndrome” which describes the act of constantly cutting people down, so that you’re on the same level. I’ve been a victim of this and at the same time I’ve participated in it too – it is something that is deeply ingrained in Australian culture. But moving to London, I’ve found that this is and was an error in my character. Now I’m not preaching that I’m perfect. I’m not saying that I’ve never spread bad energy, but what I can say is this: being overseas has given me a more well-rounded view of the world, and has let me observe the ‘cycle of negativity’ that plagues our world. What we need to do is break that cycle. This generation I find myself a part of, our generation is the most important in this history of the world. Emotionally and physically the world as we know it is dying. But “Generation Y” is about to take over the world. And during the movement of change we as the leaders of this new society need to implement some baseline values and ideas that will underpin our lives on this green Earth moving forward. We need to remove this concept of an ‘eye for an eye’ from our subconscious. Mark and Anton laid it all out to each other and it was purifying. The results of this conversation was an immense sense of growth for all parties. Paris as a city fostered this, the mystery French girl acted as a catalyst. Shortly after this profound conversation Mark received a text from said mystery French girl saying that she would meet us for lunch on our final day. A chance for us collectively to thank this mystery woman, who had shown us the utmost kindness. But also a chance for me, a curious young photo documentary artist to meet someone who was there in Paris, during the Bataclan shootings. A sense of excitement coursed through my veins.

Meet Elise, the mystery French woman with a heart as big as I’ve ever seen throughout all of my travels. We hug and kiss her, and slowly make our way into the restaurant. The conversation begins to fly back and forth; who’s lived where? What have you done? Who have you met? And then I feel it is my duty to ask, “Where has this kindness come from? How can you trust a person you’ve meet once and two randoms to stay in your apartment unattended for a whole weekend?” “It’s simple,” she replies, “we all like to travel and I know sometimes this thing called money won’t allow us to travel as much as we’d like. So I like to help out where ever possible.” That was it…. Just an act of kindness. No reward, no medal. Just the simple satisfaction of helping your fellow traveler. This statement filled my heart with such warmth, but also a sense of excitement; Elise is a part of the new breed ‘Generation Y’ that is about to come into power in society. Myself and every other young person in the world today have such a great responsibility; we are the generation who can change the world, we can make love and kindness the norm, we can once and for all bin this ‘eye for an eye’ ideology and build a society that is both physically and emotionally stable. I came to Paris to document the aftermath of the Bataclan shootings so I felt it was time to ask the question. “Elise, what was it like?”

“It was very scary. Every form of public transport closed, the buses, metro and even the taxis. People had no way of getting home other than walking and nobody knew if the shooters had been caught so everyone was terrified to go out on the streets. It’s at this moment the twitter hashtag #porteouverte was launched (hashtag open your doors). A social movement in which the French citizens opened their homes to complete strangers as a shelter until the danger had passed.” This got me thinking; I can relate to this, Elise has pretty much done the same for us. Three travelers in a foreign city had experienced a profound act of kindness as a near stranger opened her doors to us as if we were her own flesh and blood. As the conversation digressed I stated to Elise that Mark, Anton and I had detected a massive outpouring of kindness from the Parisian community. I asked her, “Do you feel this is a knee jerk reaction after the terrorist attacks?”

Elise answered with, “Yes it is maybe a chain reaction, but that’s not all. It’s a culmination of multiple other things as well.” Here is the question I am posing to you: Why do we as a society, at this moment in time feel that we have to wait for something negative to happen to be kind to our fellow man? Why do we always look for the negatives? Why can’t it be different? Why not us, Generation Y, why not you as a reader and follower of my work, why don’t you start this moment of positive energy? Why can’t you be the change? If my trip to Paris has taught me anything it is that there is no limit to human kindness. It has taught me that false stereotypes do exist and we need to learn to make up our minds, as opposed to listen to what people before us have said, but most importantly

WE ARE THE VOICE OF CHANGE and WE ARE TAKING OVER. # porteouverte