Students signing their album “Copy & Past”, June 2025. “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Photo: Clara Darin.
Students discovering their ‘Copy & Paste’ album, June 2025. “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Photo: Elena Lespes Muñoz.
Restitution, June 2025. “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Photo: Clara Darin.
Restitution, June 2025. “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Photo: Elena Lespes Muñoz.
Studio recording, April 2025. “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Photo: Manon Michèle.
Album cover of “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Graphic design: Manon Michèle.
Booklet album of “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school(Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Graphic design: Manon Michèle.
First workshop session at Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement), November 2024. “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Photo: Elena Lespes Muñoz. Graphic design: Manon Michèle.
Studio recording and texts by the students, April 2025. “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Photo: Clara Darin. Graphic design: Manon Michèle.
Booklet album of “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Graphic design: Manon Michèle.
Back cover album of “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Graphic design: Manon Michèle.
Students signing their album “Copy & Past”, June 2025. “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Photo: Clara Darin.
Students discovering their ‘Copy & Paste’ album, June 2025. “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Photo: Elena Lespes Muñoz.
Restitution, June 2025. “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Photo: Clara Darin.
Restitution, June 2025. “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Photo: Elena Lespes Muñoz.
Studio recording, April 2025. “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Photo: Manon Michèle.
Album cover of “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Graphic design: Manon Michèle.
Booklet album of “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school(Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Graphic design: Manon Michèle.
First workshop session at Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement), November 2024. “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Photo: Elena Lespes Muñoz. Graphic design: Manon Michèle.
Studio recording and texts by the students, April 2025. “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Photo: Clara Darin. Graphic design: Manon Michèle.
Booklet album of “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Graphic design: Manon Michèle.
Back cover album of “Copy & Past”, residency by Manon Michèle, accompanied by Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school (Paris, 13th arrondissement) in collaboration with Action Collégien and with the support of the City of Paris as part of the l’Art pour Grandir programme, Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, 2025. Graphic design: Manon Michèle.
Copy & Paste – Artistic residency Art pour Grandir (Art for Growth)
Manon Michèle
Curator: Elena Lespes Muñoz
What kind of world do we dream of when we grow up? How can we dream it together? How do we write it down?
The “Copier-Coller“ project invites schoolchildren from the Thomas Mann school (Paris) to take hold of the immediate and familiar world, the better to get rid of it, by cutting it up, tearing it apart and putting certain pieces back together again.
By introducing the students to the notions of originality, cut-up and pseudonym in literature, and the sample technique in music, the artist invites them to reconsider the way they perceive themselves and others, and themselves in relation to others. Imagining that each of us is made up of a sum of influences all our own, the project invites us to draw inspiration from figures near and far, to assert our own specificity, while at the same time putting our differences into perspective. Carrying a plural and composite voice, the young people will develop – through writing workshops followed by sound and vocal experimentation – a universe populated by dreamed-up versions of themselves, where everything has to be collectively reinvented. By defining the parameters of this ecosystem so that their alter-egos can flourish, they will project a reality determined by their desires, and not the other way around.
For this project, artist Manon Michèle invites musician and producer Emilien Point Afana to contribute to the making of this textual and sonic world.
Manon Michèle
Manon Michèle is an artist, author and graphic designer. Between the visual arts, publishing and writing, her practice questions textual textures, modes of conversation and writing. Between 2019 and 2021, she completed the ‘Approaching Language’ master’s program at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam, and since then has been exploring the instability and ambivalence of language between poetry, printed objects, painting and installation. By observing the circulation systems of language and words, she notes how the latter – propagated from mouths to texts, moved from echoes to silences, repeated, reformulated, appropriated, haunted – take on new meanings and powers. She is the initiator of the collective publication Beginnings, to be published in 2024 by Ex. Coda, and the author of texts and poems published in Librarioli and Daisyworld Magazine.
Émilien Point Afana
Émilien Point Afana (a.k.a. Zulu) is an underground electronic producer and artist born in Cameroon and based in Paris. His music is a collision of aesthetics, between bass, experimental, trap and vocals, a mix of influences that is both introspective and assertive. His debut EP Smart & Loyal was released in 2022 on the Deardogs label, and the album Hear The Sound Of My Feet in 2023 on Association Fatale.
This project is carried out in partnership with the School Thomas Mann (Paris, 13 e) and the Action collégien program of the City of Paris, in partnership with the centre Paris Anim’ René Goscinny. It is part of the Art Pour Grandir artistic residency program in collèges, and is supported by the City of Paris.
For this project, artist Manon Michèle is joined by musician and producer Emilien Point Afana in creating this world of text and sound with the voices and/or writings and drawings of Aïcha, Badr-Eddine, Celya, Charlotte, Emma F, Emma T, Ethan, Fatouma, Karma Dicky, Keenan, Ikram, Liam, Louis, Marie, Maryvanne, Miguel, Naïm, Nazim, N’naoumou, Rabiiaah, Renas, Tahsina, Zekra from 3ème B Thomas Mann secondary school.
Listen to the album on our SoundCloud page.
Project & graphic design
Manon Michèle
Sound production
Emilien Point Afana
Voice recording
Antoine Shokkos from centre Paris Anim’ René Goscinny, with the support of Clara Darin & Emilien Point Afana
Screen printing t-shirt
Marthe Drucbert
Restitution of the Art pour Grandir residency by Manon Michèle, in collaboration with Émilien Point Afana, at the Thomas Mann secondary school in the presence of the students and their teachers Delphine Bigo and Clarisse Phserizier, accompanied by Laura Salimbeni from the Action Collégien.
With the voices and/or writings and drawings of Aïcha, Badr-Eddine, Celya, Charlotte, Emma F, Emma T, Ethan, Fatouma, Karma Dicky, Keenan, Ikram, Liam, Louis, Marie, Maryvanne, Miguel, Naïm, Nazim, N’naoumou, Rabiiaah, Renas, Tahsina, Zekra from 3ème B Thomas Mann school.
Project & graphic design: Manon Michèle
Sound production: Emilien Point Afana
Voice recording: Antoine Shokkos from centre Paris Anim’ René Goscinny, with the support of Clara Darin & Emilien Point Afana
Screen printing: Marthe Drucbert
