Working in both the Middle Ages and the 21st century: a cross-time adventure!

They are building a fortified castle where there used to be none. This is Guédelon, and the year is 1257. The workwear is that of ‘labourers’: a smock tied with a rope and canvas trousers, all in muted colours. Blue does not feature. The footwear is modern safety boots. The site opens as soon as the days grow longer and closes with the first frosts.

Three materials, found on site, are used: wood, clay and stone. The volunteer workers move from one site to another as and when required: one day cutting stone, the next making clay or wooden tiles. Training? Learned from the professionals on site; everyone gets straight down to work.

The tools are made on site, so you have to learn how to use them. You have to find the right technique, but first and foremost, you need to familiarise yourself with the material, as it is the material that teaches you. The body learns to move – the whole body. The weather dictates your relationship with the material. Time slips away in a state of concentration that is both intense and relaxed. The other workers are there; the work is carried out as a team, but there is no focus on output. There is no routine; time flows in a non-linear way.

Practice comes before theory. The latter is based on measurements taken from the body: a foot, a thumb… Nature is the textbook.

But we mustn’t idealise it: this experience remains hybrid; fantasy is never far away.

It is a test of oneself: will I be able to endure such toil? Will I finally be able to find the right gesture? Will I be able to set my ‘knowledge’ aside in order, as Clot writes, to ‘bump into’ reality’? But will I be able to distinguish between the reality perceived in a necessarily fragmentary way, the reality that imposes itself on me, and the fantasised reality?