Jérémie Brugidou, Senior Fellow at Iméra, and Agnès Callu from the Laboratoire d’anthropologie politique (CNRS/EHESS) are organising a four-day workshop on conceptual transplants and creative reserch in oceanic worlds.
Copyright: ©jeremiebrugidou
Arts and sciences creative research in an oceanic context
On the edge of aesthetic experience and theoretical concepts, this workshop proposes to reflect in practice, in thought and in the field, on what oceanic research-creation can do today within the frame of “arts and sciences”. An often catch-all notion, it promises as much as it can disappoint, and demands to be analyzed, reformulated, experimented with, manipulated and perhaps transplanted.
Coral transplantation is an interesting case study for thinking about the regeneration of biodiversity in interdisciplinary and multispecific terms. By resituating research-creation within the ongoing catastrophe, can we regenerate biopsychic richness through the skilful and inventive practice of transplantation? The powerful gesture of taking a chunk of liveliness from one place to another requires analysis, construction and experimentation.
Aesthetics plays its part in mapping the territory of the sensitive, revealing the politics of sharing. Between frontiers, concepts must be exchanged and transformed, requiring the formulation of a shared language for the “other-place” we are making. We propose to crystallize this shared “other-place” from the vague idea of a place: the deep ocean. The aim is to endow the “other-place” that brings us together with a materiality and an imaginary, in other words, to build a multiple language around it.
Experimenting and theorising together alternative ways of thinking about worlds
Fondé sur la matière du « corps vécu » (Merleau-Ponty) et pour construire une grammaire partagée entre l’Art et la Science, la Philosophie et l’Anthropologie, le dur et l’humain, notre atelier créatif invite chercheur·euses et artistes à expérimenter et théoriser ensemble les écritures alternatives pour penser les mondes soumis aux chocs du « Contemporain extrême ». Parler/Écrire/Matérialiser un langage commun – quelle qu’en soit la nature – requiert une démarche sur le temps long. Ce langage peut générer un nouveau lexique. Il est formellement hybride : graphé, signé, dessiné, chorégraphié, filmé, etc.. Il s’avance comme le socle épistémologique et pratique d’un terrain commun de recherche où la transdisciplinarité n’est pas simplement une valeur ajoutée, mais une condition de possibilité. Nous proposons de le construire à partir de la notion de transplantation.
Based on the matter of the “lived body” (Merleau-Ponty) and to build a shared grammar between Art and Science, Philosophy and Anthropology, the hard and the human, our creative workshop invites researchers and artists to experiment and theorize together on alternative ways of thinking about worlds subjected to the shocks of the “Extreme Contemporary”. Speaking/Writing/Materializing a common language – whatever its nature – requires a long-term approach. This language can generate a new lexicon. It is formally hybrid: graphical, signed, drawn, choreographed, filmed and so on. It stands as the epistemological and practical foundation of a common research ground, where transdisciplinarity is not simply an added value, but a condition of possibility. We propose to build it around the notion of transplantation.
Among the questions posed, the following are the most important: to what extent should the act of transplantation be transmissible, is it (depending on the cases explored during these days) and, if so, can it be replicated? How does it modify our categories of thought? Is it limited, each time, to a singular project? Can creation in art and science shake up standardized, interchangeable “universes of form”? Questioning the Ocean and the political stakes and perspectives it assigns to the academic and artistic debate, in front of the sea and at sea, this workshop reflects on aesthetic practices which, at the elbow of the art sciences and the hard sciences, are likely to provide answers and/or suggestions to a major social issue on the horizon of the United Nations Conference on the Oceans in Nice in June 2025.
Programme
The entire event will take place behind closed doors and by invitation, except for the evening of Thursday 3 April, which will be open to the public and followed by a performance at the Planetarium.
Arrivals from 12 pm to 2 pm.
2 pm to 6 pm: afternoon at Iméra
- 2-2:30 pm: Welcome by Constance Moréteau, research coordinator and head of development for Iméra’s arts and sciences axis.
- 2:30-3:30 pm:The Ocean, the arts and the sciences. Premices, theoretical and critical tools and sensitive experiences. Presentation by Agnès Callu and Jérémie Brugidou.
- 3:30-5 pm: First collective writing workshop: What stories for the dark ocean?
4 pm: coffee break. - 5-6 pm: debates and discussions.
9:30 am-12:30 pm : Morning at the MIO
- 9:30-10:00 am: Presentation of MIO research by Christian Tamburini.
- 10:00-11 am: Presentation of work by MIO doctoral students (Agnès & Jérémie, discussants) and discussion.
Break. Visit of Service Atmosphère Mer: remote sensing with oceanographic technologies. - 11:30 am-12:15 pm: Presentation by Maria Ptqk: What is arts-sciences curation? and discussion with Agnès Callu & Jérémie Brugidou.
Lunch
1:30-3:00 pm: Afternoon at the MIO
- 1:30-2:00 pm: Presentation of a film by Momoko Seto.
- 2-2:30 pm: Presentation by Lara Tabet.
- 2:30-3:00 pm: Presentation by Aline Pénitot.
Back to Iméra
- 4:30-5:30 pm: Case study : corals and their transplantation, with Christine Paillard. Discussion with Agnès Callu and Jérémie Brugidou.
- 7-8 pm: Performance and musical improvisation at the Planetarium : “Sounding the Dark Ocean” by Daniel Oore, Diemo Schwarz, Olympia Boyle and Aline Pénitot.
9:30 am-12:30 pm: Morning at the Camargo Foundation
Collective choreography workshop/performance with Ambra Zambernardi around “observant com-participation”: what is abyssal multispecific movement?
Lunch
2-6:30 pm: Afternoon at the Camargo Foundation
- 2-2:45 pm : Ambra Zambernardi: Embodied partnerships.
- 2:45-3:30 pm: Aurélie Mossé: Biodesign and multispecies partnerships?
3:30 pm: break - 4-5 pm: Discussion with a representative of the TRAS network (Christine Paillard): arts and sciences as a multispecies partnership?
- 5-6 pm: Retex (Agnès & Jérémie, discussants) and discussions with Camargo residents.
Back to Iméra for dinner
9:30 am-12:30 pm: Hike at Frioul
Plan accordingly: shoes, backpacks, snacks, water, swim suit if applicable, towel, any underwater gear, drawing/writing/sounding/etc. material…
- Discussion with Olivier Bocquet, prospective submarine architect and Aurélie Mossé, biodesigner (ENSAD)
- Alternative writing and drawing workshop with Anna Guillo and Josune Urrutia Asua: What imaginaries now?
Picnic at Frioul.
2:30-4:30 pm: Afternoon at Iméra
- 2:30-4:30 pm: Preparation of a programmatic research program.
4 pm: Coffee break
5-7pm: Evening open to the public at Iméra
- 5-7 pm: Public presentation of the conclusions.
Final multi-sensorial performance at the Planétarium
Regrouping ideas in choreography, sound, and visuals to create an immersive sensorial experience in the Planetarium.
The event organisers
A graduate of the École nationale des Chartes (published thesis, Prix Lenoir) and the Institut national du Patrimoine (INP/Conservateur du Patrimoine – État/Musées), Agnès Callu holds a doctorate in contemporary history from Sciences Po – Paris (Prix Chaix d’Est Ange from the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques – published thesis, reprinted in 2017), and is qualified to direct research at the EPHE/PSL. She is a historian and art historian.
Qualified as a University Professor (Section 22), she is a statutory researcher at the LAP, Laboratoire d’Anthropologie politique – Approches interdisciplinaires et critiques des mondes contemporains, (EHESS/CNRS, UMR 8177). She is also an associate researcher at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (HISTARA team), at ITEM/ENS (Processus de Création / Genèse de l’œuvre team) and at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Institut Acte, UR 7539).
She has recently published: in 2018, Culture et élites locales en France (1947-1989) pref. Jean-Louis Fabiani, Le Mai 68 des historiens, [pref. Patrick Boucheron], Presses universitaires du Septentrion and, with Roland Recht, L’Historien de l’art : Conversation dans l’atelier (L’Atelier contemporain); in 2019, Dessein, Dessin, Design : pour une fabrique médiatique de l’histoire (Éditions Hubtopia); in 2020, Épistémologie du dessin. Concepts, lectures et interprétations, XIX-XXIe s (Éditions Jacques André).
She directs several book collections: ‘Le Dessin au Présent’, published by Éditions Gourcuff-Gradenigo since 2019; ‘Dans le silence de l’atelier’, published by Éditions Jacques André since 2021; and ‘Imaginaires de l’architecture’, published by Éditions du Bord de l’eau since 2022.
