Study at ENSAPC

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Jeff Guess and Guillaume Chevillon (ESSEC Metalab) with guest artist Galdric Fleury
Partenaires : ESSEC Metalab for Data, Technology & Society

For this third version of the ARC, Artificial Intelligence, we again propose to bring together students from the ENSAPC and from the ESSEC Business School to reflect together upon recent advances in Artificial Intelligence and to collectively create a video game.

The press is full of promises and fears that new tools such as GPT-4, Bard, Dall-E and Midjourney have finally brought about some form of a general machine intelligence. Despite the wonder we sometimes feel before the ease with which these programs create texts, images, music and code, we can legitimately question this contemporary desire to consider massive statistical models as thinking machines. We plan to explore this situation critically by examining its various political, social, economic and environmental ramifications by creating a video game together.

This year we have the pleasure of inviting the artist Galdric Fleury, who with Antoine Fontaine, is part of the duo fleuryfontaine (https://fleuryfontaine.fr/en/) and whose work is fully centered on these questions. No technical expertise is required but it is definitely useful. We will use Generative AI tools as much as possible to help us with the construction of the video game. We will collectively combine our various individual competencies, whether it be 3D modeling, programming, sound, video, writing, performance, etc. in order to make this ambitious group project. We hope to be able to present the game we develop, as we did the previous years, as an exhibition, a performance or an augmented talk.

CONVERSATION 

Jean-Luc Verna

Conversation is a very special occasion where I will be present to discuss and exchange with you, listen and advise you- maybe even reassure you on your practice, your drawing as a priority but also, given the plurality of my own artistic practice: representation in general, performance, embodiment, voice positioning, eloquence and physicality.

CRÉATION & ÉCOLOGIE

Laure Limongi
associate teachers: Nadine Le Rigoleur (library), Jagna Ciuchta, Charlotte Charbonnel

In partnership with the Prix du roman d’écologie (Ecology Novel Prize), the Wallonia-Brussels Centre, the École Nationale Supérieure de Paysage de Versailles (Versailles National School of Landscape Architecture), and the University of Cergy Pontoise. How does environmental concern inform creativity? What impact does it have on forms and issues, beyond themes? How does one defend one’s aesthetic choices orally? In partnership with the Prix du roman d’écologie (Ecology Novel Prize), this ARC offers an in-depth reflection on issues of creation and ecology, through encounters with practitioners (authors and visual artists). It will also involve constructing an argument and learning how to defend it in public. Indeed, half of the jury for the Prix du roman d’écologie is made up of students from ENSAPC and the École Nationale Supérieure de Paysage de Versailles.

The other half of the jury is composed of professionals from the field of writing and specialists in ecological issues.

DOUBLE ESPRESSO

Lead teachers : Carla Adra, Jagna Ciuchta
Guests : Anna Meschiari & Philippe Spigolon
Partner : Résidence RIGA

DOUBLE ESPRESSO is a duo ARC. Led by the duo of teachers Jagna Ciuchta et Carla Adra, students are invited to work in duos, the residency is hosted by RIGA, a venue founded and run by the duo Anna Meschiari and Philippe Spigolon.

Aimed at students wishing to engage in an artistic collaboration over a concentrated period of time, intense and coarse. Each duo works together from the beginning to the end of the project. It is possible to come as an existing pair or use this opportunity to experiment with a first collaboration.

THE PROJECT TAKES PLACE IN TWO STAGES:

— Six preparatory sessions at ENSAPC

— A week-long residency at RIGA, a research and creative space in the heart of the Tarn region, culminating in a public presentation.

KOLEKTIVA

LES ÉCRITS DES FEMMES ARTISTES  (WOMEN ARTISTS WRITINGS)

Carole Boulbès

Artists’ writings lie at the intersection of several disciplines: literature, visual arts, art history, sociology of art, psychoanalysis, and aesthetics. It is this unique combination that makes them unusual, difficult to grasp but rich in insight. From Raoul Hausmann to Andrea Fraser, via Asger Jorn and Krzysztof Wodiczko, the body of texts to be discovered is almost endless…

Artists’ writings either reveal a great deal about their practice or say nothing at all. Some give lectures and interviews, while others write notes in the utmost secrecy. Rather than self-analysis, some prefer short forms such as poems, political slogans or aphorisms.

Increasingly, artists’ writings are becoming exhibition pieces or film synopses. This year, the focus will be on the writings of women artists in art history.

This Arc/Seminar aims to read collectively and study a corpus of artists’ writings together. Participants may suggest texts, whether or not they are related to their artistic practices. The main focus will be on discussing concepts related to creation, production and research (links between theory and practice, working methods, promotion of work) in a critical and constructive spirit.

LES YEUX FERMÉS ( WITH EYES CLOSED)

Florent Caron Darras, Charlotte Charbonnel, Alejandra Riera
In collaboration with the Sound workshop

We are so used to seeing at the same time as we hear- what if we closed our eyes to pay new attention to the world? What if we closed our eyes to pay attention to our other senses? When it comes to the concepts of listening ecology, it is perhaps the immateriality and invisibility of sound waves that prevail over their properties. Sound provides information about the environment in a different way than sight, giving us access to the ‘off field’, to what is furthest from us, as well as providing us with in-depth information about what is close to us.

What would be the equivalent of deep listening for the senses of touch, taste and smell? This ARC will be an invitation to engage in or continue experiments to tasting, touching, smelling and listening to art. An immersion offered over three Mondays in the second semester, with the guidance of a specialist.

MANIÈRES DE FAIRE, FORMES D’ÉNONCIATIONS (WAYS OF DOING, FORMS OF ENUNCIATIONS)

Alejandra Riera, Nicolas Feodoroff (cinema critique and programmer) + 1 surprise guest

Enunciation involves at least two people: the person making their statement and the person receiving it, the addressee. How can we consider in greater depth this relationship that is giving ‘agency’ to the person who receives? What forms of statements are relevant or helpful in emergency situations, war, or circumstances where communication with others is a necessity? What ethics apply to this address? Since utterances function as a means of legitimising or questioning one’s own space, what forms of enunciation do you use in your filmmaking projects?

This year, Manières de faire returns to its line of research by studying ‘forms of enunciation’ in film language. The idea is to encourage you to think about this question, because it involves consideration of the addressee, of the person, close or far, for whom we do what we do. Thus, thinking about enunciation, within a filmic practice or one involving the moving image, will lead us to delve very precisely into the circumstances that trigger and host the enunciation. What circumstances allow communication, which ones are less conducive, and how can we reinvent them, or resist, when communication is difficult or even impossible? The question of the point of view/ listening will be raised: who speaks, in the broad sense (speech being one mode of expression among others), who are we talking about or on behalf of, who are we allowing to speak and under what conditions? How can we make room for others to have the floor without it being given to them? The instances can be human or non-human, which opens up other ‘perspectives’ and requires a form of decentring.

ONDÆS – création intermédia France/Argentine

Laure Limongi, Nicolas Charbonnier, Vincent Gérard
In partnership with UNA (Buenos Aires), UNPAZ (Buenos Aires). Programme INNOVART.

Collaborative project between France and Argentina supported by INNOVART. Ondæs (a mix between the words “ondes” in French and “ondas” in Spanish) is an intermedia project of literary, sound and audiovisual creation, interested in the aquatic elements in specific territories (oceans, rivers, meteorological disruptions, etc.) and is inscribed within an eco-poetic, eco-musical and eco-cinematographic process; its aim is to create a unique and innovative listening and viewing experience that is respectful of the environment, as well as acquiring professional know-how. This project will last three years. Having introduced the themes and practices in the first year, we will now take a closer look at them and set up the first feedback sequences. A number of exchanges between UNA and UNPAZ teachers and students are programmed in.

TIRAGES PHOTOGRAPHIQUES 

Christian Genty, Vincent Gérard
In partnership with the technical studios: Photo Studio et Cinema Studio
Guests: Julie Laporte, technicians/printers from the Anthracite laboratory (Neuilly-sur-Marne) ; Laura Brunellière (artist/photographer, writer and editor), Sonia Voss (writer, curator)
Partners : laboratoire Anthracite (Neuilly-sur-Marne) – laboratoire Cadre en Seine (Paris) – YGrec – Le Bal – Rencontres d’Arles 2026 (dont institutions locales, Luma, Ensp)

« Tirages photographiques » invites you to reflect on, and then put into practice, three stages of photographic work:
1/ Choosing from the work of the various students to build a single portfolio – with a stage of discussion and selection of the work alongside the contributors and the partner laboratory.
2/ Printing the selected photographs in the professional laboratory under the supervision of the printers, a photographer/printer and the teaching team.
3/ Publishing the portfolio under the supervision of a guest artist/photographer and editor as well as a guest curator.

This ARC is aimed at students who practise photography. The preparatory sessions will consist of sharing individual approaches that have already started or are in the early stages of their development. The second stage will involve choosing from the sets of photographs produced. A meeting and presentation of the works will then take place with the printers from the Cadre en Seine laboratory, with a photographer and printer, an artist/photographer/editor and an exhibition curator, to identify the photographs that will be printed in the laboratory.

THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY

Lead teachers: Véronique Joumard, Judith Perron
Guest: Yuliia Kyrychenko

Academic exchange between the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München and the École Nationale d’Arts de Paris-Cergy.

The project focuses on one artistic medium in particular: glass. It will involve conducting artistic research into the different contemporary forms of the visual and the unvisual. However, the project is not limited to specific practices; all types of media are possible as long as they are relevant to the issues addressed.

The aim is to develop knowledge and skills related to experimental practices involving glass and mosaics. The aim of the trip is to enable us to broaden our understanding of practices related to the medium of glass. More broadly, it will enrich our practices and our perspective by exposing us to other artistic practices based on different contemporary forms of the visual and transparency.

TROUVER LE CHEMIN DANS CHACUNE DES ALLÉES QUI OBLIQUENT (Finding the way in every skewing alleys)

Lead teachers : François Aubart et Jagna Ciuchta
Guests : Clara Pacotte, Hélène Giannecchini

Queer theory is often characterised by a distrust of essentialisations and norms that define sexualities and genders according to immutable and definitive criteria. These norms also have a significant influence on our behaviours, interactions and activities, whatever they may be. During these sessions, we will address active disorder as motivation, what queer practices lead us to read, and what queer theories do to our practice.

Can we invent methods that are sceptical of categories? How can we formulate alternatives that do not become entrenched? How can we highlight silenced voices without stifling them? These are some of the questions we would like to explore. Without a pre-established programme, driven mainly by a desire to share and discover, we would first like to discuss together theories and research that we are passionate about, as well as those presented by the participating students and occasional guests. These discussions will hopefully provide the material and leads needed to produce a publication next year.

The name of this ARC and research line is a quote from Monique Wittig’s book “Le Corps lesbien”.