The ecological crisis that we know is entangled, in its causes and in its effects, with a crisis of sensitivity : Homo Economicus cruelly lacks sensitivity and “adjusted consideration” [Morizot, 2019] to his environment, and to the forms of life on which his own existence nevertheless depends. Taking a decisive "ontological turn", following the work of Philippe Descola, Bruno Latour or Donna Haraway, among others, the social sciences and the life sciences call for reweaving sensitive relationships with the different modes of existence  - whether biological, physical, psychic, social or metaphysical – which make the Earth a living being [Hypothèse Gaïa, Lovelock, 1979, Latour, 2015]. This is how, under “cosmopolitical” approaches [Stengers, 2007], which integrate “all the non-human entities that participate in human actions” [Latour, 2007, 69], philosophers, scientists and artists are called to promote a new relationship culture, and to produce the stories1.

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Because they work in the arts of presence and relationship, living art artists (dance, theatre, performance, etc.) are particularly affected by this crisis of sensitivity, and rightly seize on ecological issues. . Thus, the living arts today are experiencing an “eco-critical” turn [Sermon, 2021] which can contribute to the social promotion of an ecology of the senses.

 

Nevertheless, it seems to us that the spectacular configuration of the work in representation (however participatory, immersive or situated it may be) does not keep all its ecological promises, in terms of transformative experience. Far from naively opposing the properties of representation (mimesis) to those of experience (praxis and poiesis), this project is interested in artists who choose to work on sensation and relationship in the experimental mode of shared practice, and no longer only within the framework of the work.

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1.2 … in the fields of living art…

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In the broader fields of dance and performance, practices have emerged over the past few decades that risk resolutely transforming experiences on sensitivity and cooperation, by working on the very modalities of participation.

 

Thus, artists such asLisa Nelson (USA),Joao Fiadeiro (Portugal),Loic Touze (France),Yasmine Hugonnet (Swiss),Myriam Lefkowitz (Belgium),Julien Bruneau (Belgium),Alice Chauchat (Germany), and many others, develop playful practices that radicalize the social and ecological turn that living art is taking today. These practices indeed offer experiences of art that are no longer only provided by the artist (and his individual genius), but contributed by the collective, following an engineering of the relationship and of the senses.

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In their great diversity, these practices have in common to give a value of being and partner to shared fictions, to plural sensations and to anonymous relationships. By granting agency not only trans-individual, but also non-human, these practices foster processes of collective individuation [Simondon, 1958], and develop new relationships between cosmology and aesthetics.

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But in this matter, the field of art does not have a monopoly on creativity…

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1.3 … and the social clinic.

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In the vast field of "social clinics", in other words in the spheres of activity of collectives that take care of social relations, the ecology of senses and practices is also a major question, when it comes to changing the representations and norms, to transform affects and relationships. Thus, in certain collectives engaged in the fields of health, psychology, pedagogy, intersectional struggles for the rights of minorities, social criticism and of course political ecology, experimental practices and games that also contribute to transforming sensitivities and pluralizing agencies.

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This is why, at the end of the investigations carried out for two years in the field of living art, a second part of this research project proposes to widen its perimeter to the social field, and to the "fabulous techniques" which are invent there, so as to highlight the "speculative gestures" that the fields of art and the social have in common. This dossier concerns only the first phase of the project [2024-2025, Fabulous techniques in the fields of living art]. The second phase [2026-2027 – Fabulous techniques in the fields of social clinic] will be the subject of a later presentation.