The Printemps des Laboratoires is a curatorial project proposed by Dora García, Alexandra Baudelot and Mathilde Villeneuve, co-directors of the Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers. The programme unfolds all year long, through public workshops and events (film screenings, round-table discussions, performances, etc.) tied to particular problematic, relating to art yet exceeding it. 

 Over the course of the year, the project constructs a ‘concerned’ audience (everyone is invited to participate: local residents of Aubervilliers, students, amateurs, experts) in order to exchange and share perspectives and experiences. The project concludes during the spring with a public event with an international dimension,  offering a global presentation and analysis of the work carried out over the year. This year’s event will take place on June 4th and 5th.

The Printemps des Laboratoires is a collective work platform that privileges experiences of art and politics over their representations, and the circulation and confrontation of ideas over authoritative forms of transmission. It is a site for the transversal and critical development of various projects conducted by the artists working with Les Laboratoires d’Aubervillers. It offers, moreover, the possibility of observing and reflecting on current social and political issues from within an artistic context.

The first edition of the Printemps des Laboratoires (2013) titled “Commune, Commun, Communauté”, engaged with the question of the commons. The second edition (2014), “Ne travaillez jamais!”, explored the relationship between art and work, while the third edition (2015), “Performing Opposition” investigated how art relates to the ‘polis’, in opposition to instituted powers, paying particular attention to the notion of performing public space.

The fourth edition of the Printemps des Laboratoires will be concerned with the exponential rise of prescriptions and consumption of medication for the treatment of mental health disorders, in order to reflect, among other things, on the normalisation and control that this entails, and to undertake a broader enquiry into the way society apprehends mental illness and madness.

The reading workshops which, as every year, go along with the preparation of the Printemps des Laboratoires began Thursday 22th October 2015. And the schedule of dates is available here.