“A year in the life of an art center”
Bétonsalon – centre for art and research
September 2024 — May 2025
September 2024 — May 2025
In collaboration with the Master 1 Arts plastiques – Médiation, Exposition, Critique program at Université Paris VIII Vincennes Saint-Denis.
Conceived by professors Clélia Barbut and Nathalie Desmet and the art center team, this course is designed as a kind of experimental investigation or radioscopy, during which students from the Master 1 Arts plastiques, Médiation, Exposition, Critique at Université Paris VIII Vincennes Saint-Denis, are accompanied by the Bétonsalon team to experience, through collective participative observation, “a year in the life of an art center”. Management, administration, audiences, mediation, curating, production, publishing… What knowledge and skills are deployed by the members of an art center team? Around what rhythms and in what spaces is the work organized? What are the narratives and interactions? How does a code of ethics fit in with the production of an exhibition, the organization of artist residencies, the creation of forms of mediation?
Over the course of the year, the students will be asked to find ways of presenting the results of the survey, which may range from qualitative studies and mediation tools to art criticism and even fiction: the production of a sound or visual piece to a round table and other original forms. The format of the presentation, which will take place at the end of the academic year, will be defined over the course of the project, which will be structured by the collective work.
“Tu vois je veux dire (You See What I Mean) bis” – Education project in High School Fanette Lambey
November 2024 — June 2025
“Tu vois je veux dire” is an Artistic and Cultural Education project run by Bétonsalon – Center for Art and Research (Paris, 13th), Ivry’s Contemporary Art Centre – Le Crédac (Ivry-sur-Seine, 94) and La Briqueterie – National Choreographic Development Center of Val-de-Marne (Vitry-sur-Seine, 94), in collaboration with the Adolphe Chérioux highschool in Vitry-sur-Seine, Marianne High School in Villeneuve-le-Roi, and Armand Guillaumin High School in Orly.
Initiated in 2023-2024, the “Tu vois je veux dire” project takes as its starting point Bétonsalon’s Young Mediators Program and allows high school students to experiment with different forms of mediation around artistic practices from both visual and performing arts. Continuing in 2024-2025, this project seeks—through observation, listening, encounters with artists and art professionals, dialogue, and artistic practice—to challenge the traditional roles and voices associated with discourse on artworks within cultural and artistic institutions. It does so by imagining and inventing original public engagement formats: podcasts, dance-based tours, design publication, and more.
In 2024-2025, the project expands to two new high schools: students from six classes will share and experiment with new ways of engaging in and delivering mediation around performances and dance shows they will select from the program of the Val-de-Marne Dance Biennale, organized by La Briqueterie:
• At Adolphe Chérioux High School, a class will work with artist Fanette Lambey on Alain Platel’s performance “Coup Fatal” to design a T-shirt and create a performance-based mediation informed by congolese sapology on the show for another class in the school.
• At Marianne High School, a general 10th-grade class will work on a performance from the Biennale to produce an original mediation for another class.
• At Armand Guillaumin High School, an 11th-grade vocational class will work on a Biennale performance to create an original mediation for another class.
