The battle for Paris The Guardian

The squatter art scene in the French capital is so big it's on the tourist trail. But now the riot police are moving in. By Angelique Chrisafis

The riot police arrived before dawn. Dozens of officers carrying riot shields, batons and tear gas parked their vans on an avenue on the fringes of Paris's Left Bank, ready for a confrontation. But the handful of film directors and actors inside the disused art deco cinema surrendered without a fight. They emerged blinking as police confiscated their projection equipment and theatre props, then bricked up the facade.

Le Barbizon, once one of Paris's turn-of-the-century "family cinemas", faced ruin in the 1980s, screening kung fu and porn films to stay alive, before shutting down and lying derelict and rat-infested for 20 years. Then, in 2003, a group of directors and actors broke in, secretly renovated it and turned it into an illegally squatted 100-seat showcase for plays and short films, as well as cinéma militant documentaries on the environment and the impact of France's nuclear power industry.

Like a dozen other illegal arts venues in Paris - empty factories, warehouses and parcel depots invaded and reclaimed by artists, designers and film-makers who can't afford the city's studio rents - Le Barbizon was a fixture on the local arts scene. It was supported by its neighbours, who were grateful for a cultural attraction, and an end to the rats, and its work was recommended by the local mayor. Thousands went to its screenings.

The raid on Le Barbizon and the threat of a string of other police evictions of squats artisques has panicked culture officials at Paris's city hall, who believe the capital's long tradition of squats and illegally occupied buildings are crucial to breathe life into its stultified arts scene. So integral are squats to Paris's cultural infrastructure that four years ago the city hall paid 7m euros to buy and renovate the most conspicuous one, 59 rue de Rivoli, a former bank not far from the Louvre, whose studio spaces showed street art, Duchamp-inspired sculpture, and trompe l'oeil paintings. With an estimated 40,000 visitors a year drawn by debris-sculptures hanging out of its windows, it was said by its illegal occupants to be the third most popular contemporary arts centre in Paris after the Pompidou Centre and the Jeu de Paume.

The city also rushed to buy up Les Frigos, empty cold-storage units near the Seine illegally occupied by artists and sculptors for 20 years. Now an established gallery and studio space, it sits near François Mitterrand's last "grand projet", the National Library. Even the Palais de Tokyo, a new official gallery space that the government hoped would kick-start France's ailing art scene, has hosted festivals of

squat art, inviting in installation and video artists from squats for heated debates. The notion of le squat artisque has become so mainstream in Paris that many are tourist attractions.

But the town hall's cultural leaders now fear the police and central government are putting the tradition in jeopardy in a clean-up of the city. Paris officials last week voted to protect Le Barbizon, as well as Paris's biggest arts squat, La Générale, an old shoe factory in Belleville occupied by 125 artists, film-makers and fashion designers.

Last Saturday, Le Barbizon's evicted directors projected a protest film on to their walled-up façade called: Smile, You've Been Bricked Up. Dozens of police again pulled up in vans, cordoned off the cinema and stood guard. Councillors pleaded with the police. Passers-by and shoppers joined the chorus: "Cops confiscate popular culture!"

"This is all about Nicolas Sarkozy," says Thierry Wurtz, the theatre director who ran Le Barbizon. He sees the crackdown on the squats as part of centre-right interior minister Sarkozy's campaign to be president. Sarkozy has already scored points, evicting hundreds of immigrants from France's biggest squat in the south of Paris. "He's just making a public show. I don't think he gives a shit about culture or artists."

Eric Offredo, a socialist councillor at the protest, says: "Paris is known for its big venues, its operas, cinemas, and the Louvre, but when culture becomes part of the establishment, we need to re-invent it. Art has to live and breath; these experimental spaces are crucial,"

Across the city, at La Générale, the biggest art-squat in Paris, artists were arriving for work. In one film-maker's office on the fourth floor, empty champagne bottles sat on a boardroom table surrounded by black leather chairs, with sweeping views over the rooftops of Paris. Around 125 artists work here on four floors of well-ordered studio space. They detest the term squat artistique and, like most other artists who have reclaimed derelict buildings, don't actually live there on mattresses , but rather turn them into tightly run work spaces and galleries.

La Générale has three exhibition spaces, a cinema and a photography lab, and has been used by more than 100 theatre companies and various fashion designers. Le Parisien newspaper calls it an "ideal city of art". But the building is owned by the ministry of education and there are plans to turn it into a psychiatric hospital.

"It would be a scandal for police to evict us when some people here are to show their work at Paris's international contemporary art fair this week," says Vladimir Najman, a Serbian-born economist who helps run the collective.

Arts leaders at Paris's city hall believe that work produced in squats could be a cure for the art establishment's malaise. The city of Picasso, Monet, Degas, Lautrec, Rodin, Van Gogh, and birthplace of just about every major art movement of the past 100 years, is now feared by critics to be in the artistic wilderness. Its scene has been in slow decline, stifled by bureaucracy and state control of spaces, and unable to compete with London, New York or Berlin.

Installation artist Eric Baudart, 34, sells in a gallery in the hip Marais area. Paris city hall has bought his work - pieces on transport, such as giant windscreens and road photos, as well as minimalist stone sculptures, some of which will show at the international contemporary art fair. But he still has to work in La Générale. "There is nowhere else like this in Paris," he says. "It's an autonomous space away from the officialdom of the arts world, where artists run their own studios for free. I've never produced as much work as I have since coming here."

Andrei Panibratchenko, the kilt-wearing charismatic founder of the squat, says: "Ever since Picasso and Chagall, modern artists in France have occupied spaces without paying rent; it's not going to stop now. Officialdom in Paris is creating heritage, not living art. No one is taking risks any more, so we feel we have to carry on.

"We want to prevent an eviction at La Générale, but whatever happens, the ethos of our project will continue elsewhere. At any given time I know where the empty buildings are in this city and what we could take over."

So important is La Générale, in fact, that the French culture minister promised this week that, although the eviction won't be stopped, the collective would be found a new space. But whether the squatters would want to work there remains to be seen.

Back at the gallery on Friday evening, a group of US visitors, giving whatever cash donation they chose, trooped into one of the tiny gallery spaces to look at installations such as a bucket of concrete thrown at a wall, and a large corrugated iron barrier filling a white room.

"I'm not opposed to the establishment. A lot of us work with institutions," says Sarah Fauguet, 28, who grew up nearby and has worked at La Générale since graduation from the prestigious Beaux Arts college. "But we're buying time here to create. I remember as a kid being taken by my parents to protest outside Les Frigos, which was under threat of eviction - now it's part of the Paris establishment."

The irony, however, is that it is that establishment, and the heavy bureaucracy that goes with it, that most squatters are trying to avoid.