These two days will be punctuated by song interludes and will enjoy the musical accompaniment of Alexey Asantcheeff (piano).

Free entrance on reservation: please tell us if you are booking for Saturday and/or Sunday, and if you want to stay for Saturday dinner, at reservation@leslaboratoires.org and +33 153 561 590
(for the dinner, there is a 6€ participation, including 1 drink)

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Saturday 6th June

1 pm: Lunch

4.30 pm: Break

11 am: Pratique artistique, opposition et contestation : la figure des avant-gardes et leur stratégie politique.

With Sophie Wahnich (historian) - moderator

Marc Partouche (art historian)
At the end of the 19th century numerous artists groups appear, disappear, resist, or reborn. Ephemeral or durable, important or insignificant, they intertwine the greater movements of the time, either artistic (like symbolism or impressionism) or political (like anarchism). This “goup” dynamic was the playground for experimentation and innovation and its history is still to be written. Some of the groups to investigate are : L’Eglise des Totalistes, le Groupisme, les Zutistes, les Vilains Bonshommes, les Hydropathes, les Fumistes, les Vivants, les Incohérents, les Hirsutes, les Phalanstériens, les Nous autres, les Intentionnistes, les J’menfoutistes… This dynamic, created at the end of the 19th century, is prolonged throughout the 20th century and until today.

Nathalie Quintane (writer and poet)
Des littératures critiques revisits questions of definition, reconnaissance and label of the texts grouped under the term OVNI/OLNI, non-fiction, contre-narration, post-poem etc. It reminds that there were transformations and persistence of critical literature, writing politics and politics of writing from the 80s onwards (writer like Olivier Cadiot, Manuel Joseph, Stéphane Bérard, etc). It also proposed to extend to its maximum the notion of critical literature (avant-garde literature even) in order to revive a whole repertory of forms and textural processes that were already critical and political of their time (like Pizan, Boèce, etc). In a nutshell it proposes to “recuperate” all authors and made no visible.

2 pm: “The Plot Is The Revolution”: le théâtre comme révolution et la performance comme revendication d’un espace public.
With Sophie Wahnich (historian) - moderator

Diane Scott (theatre historian)
It is true that it is difficult to say that theater today is popular leisure activity. Since the 1990s the idea of a crisis of cultural democracy has emerged. It is more and more incapable to realise great works of art for the general good. But, if we compare this discourse with 2 others, we are obliged to see things differently. The first one concerns the affirmation of a political role of theatre : today, even the most unclassical or remote theatrical forms want to do a “political theatre” , or consider that they hold the truth on the relationship between theater and politics. Why this obsession with theater having to fabricate “common”, “people”, or “democracy”?
The second phenomenon concerns the variation of our political sensibility: the doxa of the cultural crisis predisposes most of us to feel discouraged by the price of a ticket to see an opera, but the price of a dental prosthesis makes the same persons feel indifferent or even comprehensive. What is this sense of equality that only culture preserves nowadays? I would like to work together with you on the unique and complex relationship that linked theatre and people over the centuries in order to put into perspective the sometimes narrow expectations of our time and to challenge the requirement of any cultural public place: to be accessible for everybody.

Daniela Nicolo and Enrico Casagrande (Motus / Italy)
Enrico Casagrande and Daniela Nicolò founded and directed Motus since 1991. They has always sculpted their projects by action and reaction with regard to everyday facts large and small, like litmus paper, feeding on the contradictions of the contemporary, translating them and making them active material for reflection and provocation.
What characterizes Motus theatre practice is the continuous attempt to combine on stage classical texts, like Sophocles’s Antigone (rewritten by B. Brecht) or W. Shakespeare’s The Tempest, with topics, conflicts and wounds, compelling needs from the socio-political reality of our time… They believe in a kind of theatre that impacts, raises issues and does not reassure.

Marinella Senatore (artist)
For “Le printemps des Laboratoires” she will talk about her practice and her participatory work with a lot of different communities all around the world, showing some images of her latest works, among which The School of Narrative Dance.
The artist founded the School in 2013 as a nomadic, not building-based school which proposes an alternative system of education, based on emancipation, inclusion, self-cultivation and alternative political imaginaries, reinventing the structures and methodologies of the social systems. At the beginning, its programs were focused on alphabetization processes, but they quickly became an opportunity for different communities to live together, integrating the varied storytelling possibilities of disciplines such as drama, movement, arithmetic, poetry, lighting, oral history, alphabetization, in every language and without limits of age, gender, ability, social level, degree. This “methodology” can unite many groups within the school and communities to celebrate the wide variety of skills and talents which every single member can offer or develops. Citizens in Italy, Germany, Sweden, Ecuador, UK and Spain already joined the school programs. Members of local communities were invited to give lesson free of charge for any participant, based on their skills, engaging local energies and resources. Even if the final outcome has to be a performing short movie based on dance, the School provides a wide range of “experiences” and lessons in literature, oral history, carpentry, art history, photography, arithmetic, lighting. The artist facilitates collaboration among participants and also with local institutions as universities, schools, groups of theatre, museums etc. filming the entire process. Students themselves often become teachers, continuing the work of the school and using it as an open platform, even without the presence of the artist. The school is completely free and the same professionals, activists, feminist choirs, poets, craft-people and amateurs offer their teachings and share their skills, as a service to members of their community, free of charge.

5 pm: Bloggers, Hackers, Wikileakers, Whistleblowers, Youtubbers : communautés intentionnelles et réseaux sociaux.

With Marie Lechner (journalist) - moderator

Mathias Jud and Christopher Wachter (artists)
Christoph Wachter and Mathias Jud were both born in Zurich and live and work in Berlin. Their projects picidae (since 2007), New Nations (since 2009) and qaul.net (since 2012) have gained worldwide interest. As open-source projects these works uncover forms of censorship of the internet, undermine the concentration of political power and even resolve the dependency on infrastructure. The tools, provided by the artists, are used by communities in the USA, Europe, Australia and in countries like Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, India, China and Thailand. Even in North Korea activists participate. But not everyone is fond of these projects. In 2012, HOTEL GELEM with Roma families in Europe has been awarded by the Council of Europe. On this occasion Manuel Valls organised a counter-manifestation against the Art project. The PR China denied Wachter and Jud to entry the country since 2013.

Nathalie Magnan (media-activist)
Teacher at the National School of Art in Bourges, she edited La video entre art et communication (ENSBA, 1997) and Connection, art, réseaux, média (ENSBA, 2002) in collaboration with Annick Bureaud. Some other publications are « Hacktivisme : pour une pratique politique du code » in Arts Numériques, tendance, artistes, lieux & festival (ed. M21 2008) and Donna Haraway, Manifeste cyborg et autres essais, science-fiction-féminisme edited by Laurence Allard, Delphine Gardey, Nathalie Magnan. She has been teaching at Paris 8 and the California University in Santa Cruz.

Burak Arika (artist)
Burak Arikan is a New York and Istanbul based artist working with complex networks. He takes the obvious social, economical, and political issues as input and runs through an abstract machinery, which generates network maps and algorithmic interfaces, results in performances, and procreates predictions to render inherent power relationships visible, thus discussable. Arikan’s software, prints, installations, and performances have been featured in numerous exhibitions internationally. Arikan is the founder of Graph Commons collaborative “network mapping” platform.
Creative and Critical Use of Complex Networks
By experience, we have the sense that it is the networks where power resides and circulates. Yet, we end up feeling as active agents who have  the means of criticizing networks that are large and complex. In this presentation, I will discuss this issue through the recent collective mapping work “Networks of Dispossession” and the online platform for collective mapping of networks, Graph Commons.

And the Oslo National Academy of the Arts students’ contribution: Brouillard du Nord: la dépression comme forme d’opposition, les défaites personnelles et politiques comme moteur de changement.

8 pm: Musical Supper inspired by the work of Cornelius Cardew*

 



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All contributions will be translated into French/English.
* please specify if you wish to attend the Saturday evening ‘musical supper’ (with a fee of 6 €).