Practical sessions - Thomas Hirschhorn, Otobong Nkanga, Julien Creuzet

For its fifth edi­tion, the Académie vivante (Living Academy) pro­gram invited sev­eral artists to col­lab­o­rate with the lab­o­ra­tory of the Epigenetics and Cell Fate Unit of the Paris Diderot uni­ver­sity. Thomas Hirschhorn, Otobong Nkanga and Julien Creuzet have come to meet the stu­dents in order to build and cul­ti­vate a shared polit­ical reflec­tion over a diver­sity of artistic, poetic, and sci­en­tific prac­tices, guided by a fun­da­mental prin­ciple of cre­ative freedom.

Sessions 1 & 2 with Thomas Hirschhorn
December 15th and 22nd, 2017, at Paris Diderot uni­ver­sity

For the Académie vivante (Living Academy) pro­gram, Hirschhorn designed a work­shop where stu­dents in Genetics made their own col­lages over two ses­sions, and cri­tiqued them together. Collages included a mix of selected fashion and science pub­li­ca­tions, and graphic images of war and vio­lent acts, found on the Internet, used by Hirschhorn in his prac­tice. Students were led to recon­sider the pro­duc­tion of knowl­edge, the status of images, and the role of cen­sor­ship - often self-cen­sorhip - when building meaning from an accu­mu­la­tion of visual cues.

Thomas Hirschhorn (Switzerland, 1957) is a visual artist. He grad­u­ated from the Zurich University of the Arts and first worked in graphic design before devel­oping in the 1980’s a series of sculp­tural works made with raw mate­rial and rudi­men­tary col­lages. He was the first recip­ient of the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2002. A socially-aware artist, Hirschhorn often cen­ters his works on the unequal social and cul­tural con­di­tions of the modern world by inte­grating these ten­sions in his sculp­tures and instal­la­tions, placing insta­bility and pre­car­i­ous­ness at the heart of his approach. In 2004, he cre­ated the Albinet Precarious Museum, a pro­ject con­ceived with Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers that set up an ephemeral museum within a sub­urban social housing area in the north of Paris. Recently, the artist devel­oped a renewed interest for col­lage, and the way it ori­en­tates the gaze and rep­re­sents the cur­rent “con­sump­tion” mode of seeing images. Thomas Hirschhorn lives and works in Aubervilliers (France).

Sessions 3 & 4 with Otobong Nkanga and Maya Tounta
January 26th and February 2nd, 2018, at Cité inter­na­tionale des arts

Otobong Nkanga and Maya Tounta built on their existing pro­ject Carved to Flow, com­mis­sioned by doc­u­menta 14, to offer stu­dents in Genetics a two-part work­shop using coal, clay, and soap. Students were led to ques­tion the pro­duc­tion of value and the origin of goods, con­necting the con­cepts of market value in the economy of the arts and the economy of science.

Otobong Nkanga (b. Nigeria, 1974) is a visual and per­for­mance artist. After studying in her native country as well as in Paris and Amsterdam, she devel­oped a cross-dis­ci­plinary artistic prac­tice, exploring through sev­eral media (pho­tog­raphy, painting, tapestry, per­for­mance, video, sculp­ture) the ties between iden­tity, dis­place­ment and nat­ural resources. At doc­u­menta 14 in 2017, Otobong Nkanga was com­mis­sioned a pro­ject in Kassel and Athens titled Carved to Flow, encom­passing per­for­mance, instal­la­tion and enter­prise by the pro­duc­tion and sale of bio­log­ical soap. Her work was also fea­tured in the Berlin, Lyon, São Paulo, Sharjah and Sydney Biennials, and entered the col­lec­tions of the Musée national d’art mod­erne – Centre Pompidou (Paris) and Tate Modern (London), among others. Otobong Nkanga lives and works in Antwerp (Belgium).

Maya Tounta (b. Greece, 1990) is a writer, curator and artist. She holds an MA in Art History and Philosophy from the University of St Andrews (Glasgow, UK), and has been involved in var­ious pro­jects in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with sev­eral artists, namely at RUPERT in Vilnius where she worked as Curator. Recently, she worked with artist Otobong Nkanga towards the real­iza­tion of the work Carved to Flow at doc­u­menta 14 on a series of pro­grams about the prac­tices guiding the pro­duc­tion, cir­cu­la­tion and con­sump­tion of resources in art and society. Following this pro­ject, she col­lab­o­rated again with Nkanga on a par­tic­i­pa­tory ceramics work­shop in the con­text of the event We are not the number we think we are at Cité inter­na­tionale des arts in Paris in February 2018. Maya Tounta lives and works in Athens (Greece) and Vilnius (Lithuania).

Sessions 5 & 6 with Julien Creuzet
February 9th and 23rd, 2018, at Bétonsalon - Center for Art and Research, as part of the exhi­bi­tion Julien Creuzet: La pluie a rendu cela pos­sible depuis le morne en colère, la mon­tagne est restée silen­cieuse. Des impacts de la guerre, des gouttes mis­sile. Après tout cela, peut-être que le volcan protestera à son tour. – Toute la dis­tance de la mer (…)

Artist Julien Creuzet led the Académie vivante stu­dents to talk about their per­sonal expe­ri­ences, as part of his exhi­bi­tion at Bétonsalon. Building on Creuzet’s writing prac­tice, stu­dents per­formed poems in the exhi­bi­tion space, reflecting on per­sonal dilemmas, mat­ters of pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment, and their moti­va­tions for choosing the career path of genetics.

Julien Creuzet (b. France, 1986) is a visual artist and a poet. He grad­u­ated from the Lyon Academy of Fine Arts and Le Fresnoy. In 2017, Julien Creuzet was a res­i­dent artist at the Méthode Room pro­gram in Chicago (USA). After a two-part exhi­bi­tion at the Fondation d’entreprise Ricard and Bétonsalon – Center for Art and Research in 2018, his pro­jects took him to col­lab­o­rate with Lafayette Anticipations and the Palais de Tokyo for the Rencontres d’Arles fes­tival. His instal­la­tions and sculp­tures are con­ceived in res­o­nance with his poetic work, which is inspired by migra­tion and iden­tity nar­ra­tives stem­ming from the artist’s own dias­poric expe­ri­ence. Julien Creuzet lives and works in Fontenay-sous-Bois (France).