Atelier 2017-2018 

The ethnographic field as artistic exploration 

This seminar-workshop proposes to initiate a critical reflection on a mode of research in the social sciences and humanities which proceeds through artistic creation, and in particular by performance. As much attention will be paid to artistic projects that draw from the ethnographic toolkit as well as scientific projects that also assume an artistic dimension (whether literary, poetic or plastic arts). Whatever the degree of this rapprochement, these processes have in common to melt the artistic and scientific processes during the construction of their object. These methods open a new horizon by making intelligible the facts of otherwise inaccessible societies, in a collaborative spirit and suggesting new modes of restitution.In this zone of overlapping of several disciplines (mainly anthropology, performance studies, ethnoscenology, visual arts / performance and theatrical studies), the possibilities of research-creation will be explored, the methods of which will be considered as levers on lands designed as experimental.The red thread of this year’s workshop will be the creation of a show, performance or evocation that  echoes the experience of the University of Vincennes, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of its closure. This action proposes to bring to light the history of this exceptional project, by the radicality of the principles which it claimed and the utopia of the vision of the society which animated it, in a dynamics which remains today strangely difficult to forget. Theoretical sessions will alternate with the interventions of actors, witnesses or critics of the micro-utopia of Vincennes and practical workshops preparing the show presented at the end of the cycle, in June 2018.

This workshop is part of the seminar:

“Mise en scènes et en récits : choses en société, objet spectacle”

1st and 3rd Wednesdays of the month from 2 pm to 4 pm (Musée du quai Branly (room 3) 75007 Paris

The program consists of on-site and fixed sessions as well as flying sessions that will be specified during the year.

First session : 11th of october : from 2 pm to 4 pm (Musée du quai Branly (room 3) 75007 Paris