It’s our third week here in New Orleans, we don’t see the film crew much anymore, only every now and then when they need the car, to be dropped off somewhere, or to share a meal. They’re like teenagers who live under the same roof with their parents.

We spend our time at the distillery where the grain we’ve harvested is made into moonshine. Erik, the master distiller, is in charge of this operation, and while we help when it’s useful our role is more to observe. Between two fermentation periods we try to meet the cultural operators of the city to organize the follow-up, and thus the presentation of the product in a few days and then the presentation of the film in a few months.

We’re trying everything we can, from film producers to museum directors and diplomatic go-betweens. Our challenge is to get institutional support for a project that’s not part of any institution. The very financing of the project, which consists of offering the pre-purchase of bottles of moonshine to enable the trip, is an uncommon mechanism in the production of art works. This hybrid status between the production of a consumer product and knowledge seems more than ever to encounter the same old challenges.

Unlike the previous project, where we turned our boat into barrels, Mark suggested from the start not making this one disappear. Instead, he proposed selling it at the end of the project to partially cover the deficit in our finances. I wasn’t really in favour of this because I actually wanted the boat to disappear at the end, I wanted us to cut it into small boards and put them one by one into the boiler connected to the still. The idea of ​​the boat fuelling the distillery appealed to me even more, and besides, we’d get rid of the boat in the bargain. But considering the state of our finances I went along with Mark’s proposal.

We were unable to sell it during our stay in NOLA, and it was only a few days later that “XXX” came to pick it up. He lives a little further north, near a lake where Southwind will retire. XXX and I are friends on Facebook, and I recently saw a picture of the boat with a gigantic southern flag flying above it. This vision stunned me, this vessel that we partially built and driven so far was meant to be a symbol of openness, of access to “the other”, of meetings, of exchange, of mutual enrichment, and yet today it’s the ambassador of very different values.

We made our trip in Trump’s America before the COVID health crisis that would erupt barely a month after our return. It was, however, an already troubled period when codes and values ​​were clashing with humiliations, insults and offenses. As I write these lines a second impeachment is being brough against President Trump for his call to invade the Capitol, an invasion which caused the deaths of five people and imprinted in our memories for a long time this funny white guy dressed as a native American, buffalo headdress on his head, Confederate war paint on his face, screaming that the confirmation of President-elect Biden’s victory should be prevented.

President Trump now has only nine days to complete his tenure and project, and I’d never sell any of my boats again, I’d rather see them burn.