Ways of Publishing #2 / June 5th, 2021

Ways of pub­lishing #2
Saturday 5th June, 2pm-8pm
2 to 6pm: Workshop open to stu­dents with Agathe Boulanger, Signe Frederiksen and Jules Lagrange, authors of Ce que Laurence Rassel nous fait faire, Paraguay (2020)

Agathe Boulanger, Signe Frederiksen, Jules Lagrange, Ce que Laurence Rassel nous fait faire, Paris, Paraguay, 2020 © Julien Richaudaud

What are we doing here? is the fun­da­mental ques­tion that Jean Oury, French psy­chi­a­trist and psy­cho­an­a­lyst, founder of the La Borde clinic, was con­stantly asking him­self, as an eth­ical posi­tion, a way of sit­u­ating one­self, without which one finds one­self absorbed by habits, the "ça va de soi" (”it goes without saying”), pas­sivity.
Based on the book Ce que Laurence Rassel nous fait faire, this writing work­shop is open to art school stu­dents. It intends to think together about the insti­tu­tional expe­ri­ences we face in the art world, through the for­mats of the inter­view, the dis­cus­sion group and the mental journey. We will ques­tion together where we come from, what we are doing there, and which insti­tu­tions we want to inhabit. 
This book of inter­views with Laurence Rassel, director of the Graphic Research School (Erg) in Brussels, pre­sents a prac­tice inspired by fem­i­nism, free soft­ware, science fic­tion and insti­tu­tional psy­chotherapy. More than a biog­raphy, it is a tool to reflect on the ways of working in insti­tu­tions in the art world.

The artists Agathe Boulanger, Signe Frederiksen and Jules Lagrange met in the post-grad­uate pro­gram of the École des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. Their shared interest in ped­a­gogy, the working con­di­tions of artists and insti­tu­tional cri­tique led them to con­ceive this book of inter­views with and about Laurence Rassel. Through writing and per­for­mance, Agathe Boulanger explores dif­ferent forms of affec­tive her­itage, and inves­ti­gates how con­flicts shape rela­tion­ships and how they can be resolved. Signe Fredriksen writes and stages per­for­mances in a manner that chal­lenges tra­di­tional divi­sions between art and audi­ence, and she works as an occa­sional pub­lisher. Jules Lagrange is inter­ested in the degrowth move­ment and his works revolves around ver­nac­ular craft­man­ships and the feel­ings they can trigger.

Laurence Rassel was born in 1967 between Belgium, France and Luxemburg, in a region marked by the decline of the steel­work industry and which she left in the early 90s to enter an art school in Brussels. There, struck by class dis­crim­i­na­tions and uncom­fort­able with the myth­ical figure of the artist that was pro­moted by art schools at the time (a nat­u­rally gifted genius), she felt the urge to edu­cate her­self dif­fer­ently. Cyberfeminism, col­lec­tive work, sur­vival in pre­car­ious eco­nomic con­di­tions, and above all friend­ships, became the foun­da­tions of her prac­tice. She began vol­un­teering at Constant in Brussels where she found inspi­ra­tion in the open-source model. This expe­ri­ence has led her after­wards, when she became director of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelone, to imagine how the archives of a museum could be made more acces­sible to the public. She is now the director of the ERG school in Brussels where she pro­motes ways of working based on col­lab­o­ra­tion, pro­cess and trans­mis­sion – an autonomous school where the notion of authority is chal­lenged and where every stu­dent can act on the insti­tu­tion itself. As a director, curator, thinker and agent of change, Laurence Rassel has been living sev­eral lives at once, and tries to provide others with every­thing that she lacked.

6 to 8pm. L’oxy­more : un polar bizarre. Reading and pre­sen­ta­tion by Fanette Mellier and Joseph Schiano di Lombo, authors of L’Oxymore, Éditions B42 (2021).

Fanette Mellier, Joseph Schiano di Lombo, L’Oxymore, Paris, Éditions B42, 2021

In order to under­stand what this detec­tive novel is, you have to start by saying what it is not; that is, a detec­tive novel. Would L’Oxymore be an anti-thriller in this case? Hardly.
Not a drop of blood flows in these pages, not a gram of drugs cir­cu­lates, not even a little rape on the go. The inves­ti­gator, the com­mis­sioner, the police officer, the drug dealer, the sul­phurous or abused women, everyone has dis­ap­peared. And the pur­pose of this book is cer­tainly not to find them.

Is it pos­sible to write a detec­tive story without an inves­ti­ga­tion? Or rather – since in lit­er­a­ture any­thing is pos­sible if one lacks suf­fi­cient rev­er­ence for the rules – how? To what extent and by which feints can we des­ig­nate as a detec­tive novel a book that denies us not only the elu­ci­da­tion, but even the plot itself? Such a direc­tion is cer­tainly a far cry from the com­forting hori­zons to which the genre is des­tined. In fact, to refuse the police plot is to mourn the return to a har­mony that existed before the fall. It is finally to undo the square reason, that of the metic­u­lous inves­ti­gator, to con­sent to the beauty of the empti­ness on which we are agi­tated, and to yawn before the pro­vi­sional res­o­lu­tion of enigmas by which our need for knowl­edge is so easily tit­il­lated.