Study at ENSAPC

ALTÉRITÉS

Laure Limongi

A writing workshop for all levels of previous experience, Altérités invites us to look elsewhere to see to which extent our ‘I’ and our ‘me’ are not to be found there, the better to free our gestures and open up the field of our thinking. Other lives than our own, as Emmanuel Carrère would write, modalities of existence that are not simply human: we can try to write as an animal or a tree, as a mineral or a bacterium, take an interest in a historical period, an object, the vibration of a colour… anything that will allow us to take the time to define our own writing rhythm, to develop a method, to organise our research. To shift the focus away from the human, to see what would happen to a less Anthropocene, less authoritarian, more polyphonic and colourful world, and what languages and forms we would invent to express it. Palestinian poet Doha Khalout will contribute to some of the sessions. Her current work focuses on the tension between ego and meaning. Ryoko Sekiguchi will also be taking part in one session. A Japanese author, she has lived in France since 1997 and writes in French and Japanese, as well as being a translator.

CONFRONTATION AUX ŒUVRES

Eric Dalbis, with Stéphanie Katz
In partnership with musée du Louvre and Petit Palais

The aim is to confront works chosen from the museum’s collections, mainly from the 13th to 18th centuries, to question and analyse them, but also to question one’s own artistic practice in its intentions and gestures, while referring to a memory, to filiations, to a culture…

DRINKING PAINT

Jagna Ciuchta
Guests : Emmanuelle Castellan, Joséfa Ntjam, Roy Könkhé (at CREDAC)

The Drinking Paint studio invites students to become acquainted with the different practices of contemporary painting, broadens its scope to include installation and looks at the porosity between these two media. All the issues addressed in this workshop are considered from a queer and intersectional feminist perspective. The workshop is built around the work of historical and contemporary artists, and is based on visits to exhibitions, reproductions of works, documentaries and interviews with these artists, meetings and lectures. Collective analysis of the works, techniques and methods developed by the artists presented will provide students with pointers to explore in their personal practices. They will be given individual and collective support for their work through studio visits, hangings and exhibitions.

ESPACES D’ESPACES

Florent Caron Darras, Nicolas Charbonnier

In the tradition of sound installation, it is a certain experience of space that always seems to be at play with sound. In a given environment, bodies of sound produce waves or interact with them. Whether these bodies of sound are loudspeakers or objects without membranes or electricity, they are most often placed before the eyes of visitors, who are then as much listeners as viewers. This necessarily raises the question of choice in this arrangement: which spots, which orientations, which shapes? How can we compose sound spaces for tangible spaces? How can we turn apparent technology into a vector of meaning? The aim of this studio is to work together to investigate these fundamental questions in the aesthetic approach to sound.

FORMES DES LUTTES

Bérénice Lefebvre

‘(…) images to resist, images to denounce, images to mobilise (…)’.

Graphic design has always been used as a tool to rally the masses and influence public opinion. The revolutions of the 20th century have given rise to communities of resistance that will mark an abrupt change in the history of graphics and poster design.

This tradition continued and diversified with the social movements of the 1950s and 1960s around the world, alongside which many artists and graphic designers experimented freely with new forms that would adapt to the issues of society as a whole. Posters became more colourful and daring, reflecting the spirit of freedom and rebellion of the time. Silk-screen printing revitalised the production techniques of the time and became a tool for processing images that massively transformed artistic practices, at odds with the industrial and advertising worlds. With the advent of the digital age in the 1990s and 2000s, militant graphic design embraced the possibilities offered by the internet and graphic design software, enabling unprecedented dissemination and collaboration. With the advent of the digital age in the 1990s and 2000s, militant graphic design embraced the possibilities offered by the internet and graphic design softwares, enabling unprecedented dissemination and collaboration. Based on the call for image creation launched in 2024 by ‘Formes des Luttes’, aimed at artists, graphic designers and illustrators, and relayed to numerous screen-printing workshops throughout France, to encourage active participation in actions led by political organisations, associations and trade unions fighting against the current ideological drifts, we will be working on a comparative study of the archive set up in 2019 by this group of graphic designers.

IMAGES ET RESSEMBLANCE

Christian Genty and Jean-Luc Jusseau
Associated technical workshops: PHOTO and VIDEO/CINEMA 

This studio is aimed at students who want to start working with photo and video media. The aim of the studio, as a learning space both theoretical and practical, is to provide students with the resources they need to reflect on in order to produce their own research. The challenge is to experiment without preconceived ideas, to test the technique in all its possibilities and limits. In photography and video, equipment is inevitable. Initially, the aim is to familiarise the students with the equipment and the handling of the machines:

– Photographic and video shooting, production and post-production.
– Reflection on the use of colour in photography and video.
– Workshop on the use of light as a medium in the production of photography and video production.
– Work on writing, producing and directing videos, editing, colour grading, motion design and finishing.

A specific post-production module will be opened to a small group of students following on from the filming carried out this year. This module will be scheduled independently of the Friday morning meetings.

LABORATOIRE DES ÉCRITURES POÉTIQUES

Christophe Manon

Writing is really quite simple: all you need is a sheet of paper and a pen. Almost everyone can write. But how do you turn such a mundane activity into an artistic practice? What are the stakes involved in creating poetry? What could be more complex than wanting to express sensations, emotions, a memory, a desire, or simply describe an object, for example? How do you share a unique experience with others? Because poetry is perhaps above all an address. It reaches out to others. It’s a little device for embracing otherness. Poems are like the signals that the scientific community sends across space to hypothetical extraterrestrial civilisations. We don’t know if anyone or anything will ever receive them, but they send a message that we are out here, somewhere, very much alive.

LA FABRIQUE

Laure Limongi
Partners: CY Cergy Paris Université, Université de Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, Société des gens de lettres, Centre Wallonie Bruxelles.

Make progress in mastering creative writing through specific exercises to explore new facets of your practice. Share your writing research and therefore  benefit from collective feedback. Identify your literary interests. Persevere in the dynamics of writing. We will be hosting a number of masterclass speakers over the course of the year, including established writers and those just starting out, publishers, programmers and others, to open a window onto the professional world of writing. These are: Claire Fercak (author and publisher), Frédéric Martin (publisher, Le Tripode), Manon Jouniaux (ENSAPC graduate who published her first novel in September 2024), Christophe Hardy (author and president of the Société des gens de lettres, who will talk about the status of artist-authors), Stéphanie Solinas (an artist who will talk about her visual practice of writing) and the ‘Literature in & out of books’ department of the Centre Wallonie Bruxelles, headed by Stéphanie Pécourt, on the subject of literary programming (in situ visit, date to be set according to the Centre’s programme).

LA MÉMOIRE DU LION : HABITER LA PHOTOGRAPHIE DEPUIS LES MARGES

Nicola Lo Calzo

As an African proverb puts it: ‘until the lions have their historians, the stories of hunting will always turn to the glory of the hunters’. This studio aims to explore the question of subaltern narratives in photography and the possibilities offered by the photographic medium for deconstructing dominant narratives. KAM‘s photographic research on the postcolonial memory of ‘marronage’ in the Atlantic world is one of the case studies from which we will develop several lines of thinking as well as the foundations for a critical photographic practice. Beginning with an introduction to the social history of photography, its ‘dissident’ forms, the queer posture and the alliances between photography and subaltern struggles, we will question the place and role that photography can play in the emergence and visibility of minoritised narratives. As a counterbalance, we will also question the processes by which these narratives may be normalised within the capitalist world-system and the art market.

LA PHOTOGRAPHIE INFAMANTE

Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil
Associated technical workshops: photo and video / cinema

Infamous painting was a pictorial practice in northern Italy in the 15th century, consisting of the conspicuous painting of ‘infamous images ‘’ of those condemned in absentia on the walls of public buildings. These convicts were also easily identifiable thanks to inscriptions (tituli) painted in clearly visible letters. Method: Visit to exhibitions or non-museum venues with a direct (or indirect) link to the field of contemporary art. Invitation to reflect on the possibility of constructing absent or mental images today.

L’OREILLE EN COIN

Éric Maillet
Preparation for ENSAPC, workshop at CipM (Marseille)

Even if this studio takes its title from a legendary France Inter programme, it won’t (necessarily) be about radiophony; on the contrary, it will be about the ear, yes, and the corner of a room, a table, the brain, slipped into an interstice or any other imaginable corner. The aim will be to work on personal or group projects involving sound, mostly spoken, combined or not with objects and pictorial elements. The workshop will culminate in a week of immersion and feedback at the Centre International de la Poésie in Marseille, with the creation of an event open to the public: an environment made up of personal and autonomous pieces in the CIPM’s Vielle Charité premises. Each  proposal will focus on the question of ‘language as matter’ and the use of recording devices. This studio is being run in association with students from the ESA Aix sound studio and their teacher François Parra.

MISES EN ŒUVRE DESSINS-PEINTURES

Eric Dalbis, Lina Hentgen

Helping students to carry out and implement their artistic practice, assisting them in the elaboration and development of their pictorial project. Defining together the specific features of the student’s practice through a pluralist approach to content, media, techniques and contexts. Method: In the form of work monitoring, presentations, exhibitions, group and individual interviews, cross-pollination of personalities. The aim of the studio is to provide support in the development of visual media, analysis, reflection, the relevance and coherence of technical choices, references and presentation conditions.

MONDES SONORES

Florent Caron Darras

This workshop is an invitation to explore the world of sound as much as the sounds of the world. The aim is to first tackle the question of sound in as broad a way as possible, both in the sound arts and in music, but also outside artistic practices, right up to questioning the boundaries music/sound or art/ life. Above all, this workshop is an opportunity to welcome any questions or desires related to sound engineering. All kinds of projects involving sound are welcome: installation, sound sculpture, music, performance, sound poetry, video, radiophonic art, etc. Fundamental notions of acoustics will be introduced. Certain technical points will be explored using Ableton Live, Reaper and Max software. We’ll be looking at the construction and structure of time, as well as the spatial organisation of sound.

PRO BONO

Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil

Based on the discovery and viewing of films or documentaries, discussions and exchanges on the current practice of the students taking part in the workshop. Research, monitoring and development of a singular image-making practice (photographic and other). Method: group discussion around current projects.

PUMP UP THE VOLUME 

David Douard 
In collaboration with the wood and metal workshop and the screen printing and digital printing workshop.

Every Monday, the Pump Up studio brings together students involved in volume, sculpture or installation. It is organised around students’ individual projects and questions the issues at stake. The production of validated projects is monitored in conjunction with the Volume Studio. It is also accompanied by a reflection on the status of these practices today. The studio provides “tailor-made” support for the development of students’ projects, seeking to push them further in their practices, beyond the boundaries between media. Projects are monitored in conjunction with the technical workshops. Every semester, the Pump Up studio invites an artist from outside the school to present their work and discuss it with the studio’s students. The studio also offers exhibition spaces within the school to highlight the relationship with the exhibition space.

SHOW YOUR BONES

David Cousinard

Show your bones is a technical studio structured around group work sessions, punctuated by student presentations and mini workshops. Based on a number of questions posed by students in relation to hybridisation, changes of state or anti-normativity, the aim is to provide a favourable framework for experimentation in order to seek – firstly – a singularity and then to assert a position or a doubt. Refining, adjusting, specifying, revisiting and re-investing are recurring terminologies, to the extent that they demonstrate that a work, a volume, is a whole (or not) within which everything (or almost everything) makes sense. One of the aims is to put in place a ‘workshop regime’ in which each person can best articulate:
– shaping gestures and aesthetic concerns
– the ways in which a project exists and its critical or theoretical underpinnings.

STUDIO ATELIER BOIS

Samuel Garland

This studio, which is open to all year groups, is a place where students can learn to work with wood. Through theoretical and practical classes, it aims to enable students to tackle the design tools (drawing, materials, tool/aesthetic relationship) and production tools (power tools, workshop machines, hand tools) essential to the manufacture of a piece of woodwork. Throughout the course, students will be required to analyse, experiment and create around a subject chosen each year. At the end of the semester, students will present their work in a group exhibition.

STUDIO CINEMA (PRATIQUES, TECHNIQUES, ÉCONOMIES, THÉORIES DU CINÉMA)

Vincent Gérard

Guests: Baptiste Jopeck (filmmaker, producer) / Benoît Hické (programmer Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle de Paris, Tënk), Nathalie Ruffié (filmmaker, author), Moira Tierney (filmmaker, artist), Noah Teichner (filmmaker, artist, researcher), Eugénie Deplus (film post-production manager), Philippe Azoury (writer, screenwriter, film critic, teacher at ECAL)

Partners: La Maison Des Productions, Sondor Films, Perspective Films (Paris), Navire Argo (independent laboratory, Épinay), Re:Voir (publisher, resource for analogue material, Paris), Festival Arte Mare (Bastia), SCAM Paris

The Studio Cinéma is dedicated to defining what an artistic project in cinema can be today. Without having the desire or the illusion of replacing a professional film school – for which it has neither the means nor the aims – it does not ignore the economic or technical realities of this medium. In this place of confrontation and hybridisation of fine art languages that an art school represents, the aim is to question the cinema-machine and its digital avatars by making it work according to a different regime of fiction and representation of reality. Note: the films produced by the Studio Cinéma are not subject to any restrictions of form, genre or time.

STUDIO DANSE

Judith Perron
Guests: workshop with Véronique Joumard and Mathieu Bouvier

Performing, taking risks, being together, moving our bodies, twisting our faces… This journey will be an opportunity to experiment with the body. Each half-day will be devoted to a proposal/exercise based on pre-existing practices and involving different states of the body. These different methodologies, sensitive experiences, sometimes introspective, sometimes disordered, will enable us to refine our relationship to the context, to what constitutes a sign, to the spoken word, to the other…

STUDIO  PAPILLON

Carla Adra

Studio Papillon is a place designed to explore performance while offering a stable point of reference. You experiment, take risks by venturing off in new directions, then come back to talk about what you’ve experienced. The studio functions as a space for active listening, where personal experiences feed into collective reflection. Like butterflies, the studio embodies ephemeral, movement and trans-formation. It’s a setting where everyone can develop at their own pace, in an environment conducive to experimentation. Large, soft green mats will be laid out at the start of each class to create a soft, comfortable working environment. This studio focuses on creating a cohesive group, where solidarity and attention to others are paramount. This course is designed to be a moment of introspection and encounter, where performance becomes a platform for social reflection. The discovery of the performance practices of historical artists is central to the development of the course. A talk by the artist Mona Varichon, whose practice integrates sociology, will enrich the reflections on social dynamics in contemporary art. A trip is planned to the Performative Art Forum (PAF), a venue renowned for its experimental performative practices.

THINKING IN IMAGES

Véronique Joumard and  Charlotte Charbonnel
In collaboration with Lionel Catelan in charge of publishing.

Thinking in images is a practical, bilingual reflection on drawing, language and mental images. Sentences are given as stimuli for the drawing. These sentences can come from current affairs, literature, etc. The drawings are as varied as the participants, and can be made using pencil, pen or colour, in small or large sizes, on different papers or on a screen. The drawings appeal to each participant’s imagination, perception and history. The drawings are created quickly so as to link the mental image produced by the sentence and its drawing, thus naturally linking the two hemispheres of the brain, the left ‘verbal’ hemisphere and the right ‘visual-spatial’ hemisphere. During a break, they are all presented in a s simple way. Students can then see the different interpretations of the same phrase, like a musical score that can be played differently. This year Thinking in Images will be on the move, and we’ll be travelling to a variety of unusual locations, exhibition spaces or outdoors when the weather permits. We’ll be exploring different drawing tools and different positions in space and in relation to the medium. We don’t speak so much in this course, it could be a good opportunity for foreigner students to practice drawing and language, to dream in French or in English. Welcome to them!

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Nicolas Charbonnier

Throughout the year, a radio or electroacoustic piece will be developed in pairs based on recordings made on and around the construction site of the new school. The studio will provide an opportunity to document and question the departure of our current building and the memories it carries within it, and above all to imagine the time after, to consider the possibilities open to us and offered by all the people working on this project: construction workers, architects, local teams. Meeting with them will be an essential part of the studio. In this way, we will take the time to question, dream and imagine what an arts school could be in today’s society.