La Mauvaise Troupe de Romain Weintzem

Invited to devise a piece that dialogues with the environment around Lycée Clemenceau high school, Weintzem created La Mauvaise Troupe. On Rue de Richebourg, figures dressed in quirky camo outfits stand out, brandishing oversized, flamboyant brass band instruments. In the school’s bell tower on Rue Clemenceau, one of them has taken the challenge even further by climbing to the building’s highest point.

Although they are unarmed, these figures are nevertheless disarming, by boldly taking over the school grounds.

With this playfully mischievous piece, Weintzem pays tribute to En route mauvaise troupe ! – a magazine published in 1913 by a former group of classmates from this same school known as Les Sârs.
Taken from a Verlaine poem – “En route, mauvaise troupe! / Partez, mes enfants perdus!” (“En route, lousy troop, / March on my lost children…”) – their publication featured poems, essays, and witticisms that were considered to be anti-military and unpatriotic at the time. After just one issue, the magazine was banned, and some students were expelled.
André Breton was deeply influenced by this historic event, as well as with his decisive encounter with one of its key figures, Jacques Vaché. The publication of En route mauvaise troupe is thus considered the first act of the surrealist movement. The burlesque and satirical nature of Weintzem’s piece pays tribute to the humour and subversion of a group of high school students, who left a lasting mark on both artistic and political history in France.