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.