Exhibition - Animacies
Animacies
June 15-19, 2018
Opening on Thursday June 14, 2018 from 5 to 8pm
A project led by Julie Ramage
From September 2017 to April 2018, the Animacies workshop brought together two working groups from the Poissy prison and the Paris Diderot University. As part of the Académie Vivante, an experimental research platform initiated by Bétonsalon – Center for Art and Research, the participants worked to elaborate an archaeology of everyday life. The exhibition shows the final results of the project, coinciding with the National Archaeology Days and the performative exhibition 15 years! It begins, lights are changing, beautiful music appears, on view from May 2 through July 7, 2018.
What can archaeology teach us about life in prison? How does this science of traces, remains and archives intersect with notions of proof, identity and testimony? The original project, focusing on aging bodies, was soon subverted by the working group formed at the Poissy prison, which chose to study daily strategies of “survival”. These discussions and experimentations, the scientific analysis of techniques and artifacts and the exploration of archaeological conservation and restoration processes arose broader questions on wounds, healing, care and the integrity of the incarcerated body. It also interrogated everyday gestures of micro-resistance, conflicts of power and communication.
A working group of students at the Paris Diderot University reacted to these ideas by questioning their own daily lives. Age differences and personal life experiences shaped this double confrontation to the body, confinement, identity, individual and collective history.
This workshop was organized with the Students in Confinement Section of Paris Diderot University and the Ateliers Lettres pour l’oral et l’écrit (ALOÉ) of the Education and Research Unit in Literature, Art & Cinema. It benefited from the support of CERILAC at Paris Diderot University, the Yvelines Integration and Probation Penitentiary Service, the Poissy prison, Bétonsalon – Center for Art and Research, the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, and Région Ile-de-France, as a grantee of the FoRTE fund. On this occasion, a program of interventions and research was developed at the Poissy prison and the Paris Diderot University, in partnership with Inrap – Centre Île-de-France. The archaeologist Olivier Royer-Perez participated in the work sessions from September 2017 to April 2018.
Participants:
The Students in Confinement Section at the Poissy prison worked with Bachelor’s students in Literature at the Paris Diderot University: Laurent Rey, Manon Halablian, Raphaël Blanco, Adèle Rosenstiehl, Paul Lanotte, Aurélie Veleat, Cléophas Braun, Fanta Ngo Biyong, Lili Ferrando Y Puig, Julie Malfait, Sarah Mesri, Liris Sayo, Caroline Naraghi.
Upon the request of the Penitentiary Administration, the identity of the incarcerated participants was kept confidential.
About Julie Ramage:
Julie Ramage (France, 1987) works specifically in “heterotopic” spaces such as nursing and mental homes and penitentiaries, places “outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality” (Michel Foucault). Julie Ramage’s work explores the complex ties between men and the place they occupy by proposing alternatives to photo reporting such as micro-publishing, sound and video installations. The works created reference the social and technical history of media and photography, but also the humanities and writing.
After a degree in Arts and Literature at Paris Diderot University, Ramage studied photography at Smith College in Northampton (USA) and specialized in 19th century techniques (daguerreotypes, collodion) at the New York Center for Alternative Photography. Her collaboration with Bétonsalon – Center for Art and Research began in 2013. In 2014, she was selected for the Nearch - Art & Archeology program and conducted a residency at CENTQUATRE in Paris alongside the archaeologist Olivier Royer-Perez. Her work has been shown in France (CENTQUATRE, Le Cube, Maison européenne de la photographie…), the United States, Argentina and Spain. She receives support from the Région Île-de-France through the FoRTE fund.
Along with her art projects, she is currently working on a PhD thesis on the links between Antonin Artaud’s drawings made in confinement during World War II, the iconography of conflict and the militarization of psychiatry from 1918 to 1945.
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