In this film, the fish is a metaphor for a different way of building: swimming upstream, against linear thinking, looking beyond surfaces to understand systems. Eugène Riconneaus approaches his companies as living artworks. Not products, not slogans—but organisms. What we face today is often framed as a natural disaster; in reality, it is a cultural one. A crisis of intergenerational knowledge, of how we protect seeds, materials, beauty—so they can grow again and again.

Riconneaus’ practice has always focused less on owning matter than on sharing understanding. From art to science, from atelier to laboratory, his work invests in foundations: processes, protocols, and ways of seeing. Knowledge over accumulation. Regeneration over extraction.

This shift also marks a personal transformation: the artist stepping into the role of CEO—not to scale objects, but to scale meaning. With this mindset, ER Ocean Recherche has reached a new milestone: one year of secured production capacity, with costs expected to be divided by two at scale.

Challenging traditional economic paradigms by returning the company to its most essential function: solving a problem with and for a community.

The next industrial unicorn, Riconneaus believes, will not be a solitary success—but a consortium of shared energies, knowledge, and collective intelligence, capable of responding faster and wider to climate change and economic renewal.

Designed like an industrial cultural action, the company is governed to protect its purpose—so that its reason for being remains intact, transmitted, and cherished by future generations.

The fish swims on. Upstream.