speculative practices in living art [2023-2025]
and in the social field [2026-2027]
A research project proposed by
Mathieu Bouvier, researcher in dance and aesthetics, University of Paris 8.
with
Alice Godfroy, dance researcher, Université Côte d’Azur, junior member of the IUF.
Jeremy Damian, anthropologist, doctor in sociology, University of Grenoble, EMC2-LSG.
Claire Vionnet, anthropologist, dancer, Associate Fellow, Walter Benjamin Kolleg, University of Bern
Loic Touze, dancer, choreographer and pedagogue.
Yasmine Hugonnet, dancer, choreographer and pedagogue.
Researchers and associated artists
Mathilde Papin, artist and researcher.
Julien Bruneau, artist and researcher.
A project supported by the Center national de la danse's research and heritage aid scheme,
for its phase 1 [2023-2024], with Mathieu Bouvier, Alice Godfroy, Jérémy Damian and Loïc Touzé
Introduction
In living art laboratories (in dance and performance studios) experimental practices that we call "fabulous techniques" are flourishing today: these are games based on perceptual intrigues and "speculative gestures" capable of disturbing the usual dividing lines between subject and world, fact and fiction, but also between work of art and artistic practice.
Offering a real work of transformation of sensitivity, these games have the singularity of making the relationship the first agent of creation. They thus promote processes of collective individuation, and radicalize the issues of participation in art.
In the “clinics” of the social field, where collectives take care of social relations, comparable practices emerge, which also work on the ecology of the relationship by means of “speculative gestures”.
Following a dual approach, aesthetic and anthropological, this research project therefore proposes an investigation into the "fabulous techniques" that are asserting themselves today in the fields of living art and social clinic, with regard to ecological and policies they share. By studying their forms, their means and their conceptualities, it aims to support the new factories of the possible that our time calls for.
What do we call “fabulous techniques”?
Techniques are processes, means and ways of doing things. The adjective fabulous applies to stories or things that "seem imaginary, that have an extraordinary, implausible character, while being real". Fabulous techniques are therefore ways of insinuating fiction into the structures of behavior and cooperation, by means of "perceptual intrigues" [Bouvier, 2021] or playful devices that serve as "traps of possibilities": clairvoyances , telepathies, savage hermeneutics...
Motivated by speculative bets, but governed by precise rules, these games promote the disengagement of habits, emulate the work of sensation and relationship and arouse trans-individual agencies. They thus make it possible to create performances or artistic experiences whose author is no longer one, butalways more than one *.
*“A body is always more than one: it is a processual field of relations. Manning, Erin, Always More Than One, Individuation Dance, Duke University Press, 2013, French translation by Emma Bigé and Mathilde Papin, to be published at PUF, Paris, 2023, p.48.
photo :Luck, creation 2009, Loïc Touzé. Dr. Martin Argyroglo