CULTURAL EXPERIENCES

I made sure to explain what to experience is to the jailed minors, that is to agree to take part in a singular unknown moment that requires a sensitive attention and to consider this as an opportunity. A promise of some relief in their daily life in prison that is supposed to be beneficial if they think about the consequences of what they would have life. I quickly made them listen carefully, truly involve themselves through different role-playing that enabled them to verbally express themselves and share their ideas. Simple and practical ideas that mainly used images as a support to stimulate their imagination and help their expression, it enabled me to enhance their production and the result of each of their risk-taking contribution. My main goal was to train their ability to express themselves, to express a chosen point of view and to be at ease by creating a safe space where they could observe and listen, something that they often lacked in their life…  

It is the sum of gathered human individualities that should define the nature of the creation and not the other way, by making sure that what is visible through what is displayed in terms of images and sound, documents with makes us a world, a world that we create with the others.

The goal of the discussion was to question the energy transition in a pluri-disciplinary way in order to think collectively. What is the purpose of imagination in future projections but also what role can rule, education, institutional molding or the standardization of communication tools play on our ability to think about the future? What would held us back or help us to create new imaginary worlds? And how does a population feel ready to think about a desirable future and to write its story? And eventually what is the place for art in this process?

To experience worlds is first and foremost to think about an art process or a cultural approach as the treasured territory for a new relation to the Other. And it is in this place that the skills of the teacher and of the artist must find a balance and sharing point. The idea aimed for teachers who want to conduct an art project with their students was developed during the first year through regular meetings about what make a creation process up: the sharing of ideas and its structuration principle, aesthetic and artistic treatments possible, writing forms that guarantee a voluntary and interested participation of the student. The meeting aimed at helping each one to catch a material in the reality that makes them part of our shared world, to display it in a way that is understandable for most and to insist on the idea of experience from the following phenomenological principle: to try reality practically, theoretically and cognitively. I pursued my collaboration with each teacher for a second year as a form of led autonomy, during the making of their art project with their students.

The goal of the meetings throughout the schoolyear is to offer the young apprentices an artistic experience that will focus on the valorization of their personalities and the know-how in training and further their speech and expression abilities. The performance MONDE / fragment (WORLD / Piece), that will bring the educational project to a close, will enable them to show the public their identity capital and what make them worlds. Various tools will be offered in order to take risks in good conditions as part of a creative activity with the goal of a public performance. The process will also make them aware about some works and contemporary artistic approach that are about putting the individual and the relation to the world at the center of their reflection.

The educational activity will be about the valorization and sharing the identity capital of each teenager. With role playing resorting to different means of expression, each participant will display their own individuality. The sum of the ideas will enable each student to experience a shared reality where the exhibition of oneself and the acknowledgment of the other will be felt in the field of a true experience in a safe environment.

The idea of a “becoming animal” that Gilles Deleuze defines in A Thousand Plateaus, questions the boundaries between man and animal to report an alliance and a contagion between the different bodies. During the seminar, the hybrid form will be discussed by artists, ethologists, anthropologists, and philosophers.