Olympic happy hour ahead!
Seine River water for sale at 10 euros a bottle

By Louise Peloquin

     On July 9th, “The last lap” covered a major player in the upcoming Summer Olympics – La Seine, the venue to host the sure-to-be-spectacular opening ceremonies. Readers can find it on this link

Here is a follow-up on the topic.

For two hours on July 10th, artist James Colomina sold water from the River Seine on its banks to denounce the costs incurred to make it safe for swimming. The quality analyses of the Seine have been good for the last several days but not to the point of making it suitable for drinking. Even so, last Wednesday it was possible to purchase 50-centiliter bottles of Seine water for the “modest” sum of 10 euros. The water was labeled “finely polluted.” Sales lasted for two hours before the police intervened and ordered the vendor to pack up his wares.

This unauthorized street vending ended up being an artistic performance directed by James Colomina from Toulouse. (1) “I drew water from La Seine to fill fifty bottles and sell them at an exorbitant price.”

Communication agency Creapills ironically indicated on social media that this will allow “Paris City Hall to offset its 1.4 billion euro river-cleaning investment for the Paris Olympics.” By selling l’Eau de Seine, the artist especially denounces the cost of depolluting the river for the open water swimming events. Colomina believes that the investment could be “lost” and could have been used elsewhere.

The last quality analyses reveal that the water has met the safe swimming standards for ten or eleven of the last twelve days. Nevertheless, heavy rainfall could put the water retention works inaugurated before the Games to the test, possibly leading to postponing the open water swimming events or else relocating them elsewhere.

This is not James Colomina’s first denunciation of the Games. On May 17th, during the passage of the Olympic flame through Toulouse, he installed a work of art called “Le pêcheur aux anneaux” – “The fisherman of rings” – meant to denounce transforming the values of sport into a profit-making enterprise. (2) 

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1. Settled on the banks of the Garonne River, Toulouse is the fourth-largest city in France after Paris, Marseille and Lyon with some 504,000 inhabitants. It is the capital of the Haute-Garonne department in the Occitanie region of southern France. It is famous for its food, including specialties such as cassoulet, foie gras and Toulouse sausage. Toulouse is the home to Airbus, one of the world’s largest aircraft manufacturers. Founded in 1229, the University of Toulouse is one of the oldest in Europe.
2. News source – “Le Parisien,” July 12, 2024. Translating by Louise Peloquin.