CAC Brétigny

 Conversations about two years of art workshops in institutions

With Juliette Beau Denès, Morgane Brien-Hamdane, Laura Burucoa, Pauline Lecerf, Vinciane Mandrin, Zoé Philibert and local amateurs and partners.

Graphism: Morgane Masse
Curatorial assistants: Ariane Guyon, Mathilde Moreau, Jun Zhang
Educators: Milène Denécheau, Louise Ledour, Elena Lespes Muñoz
Education assistants: Domitille Guilé, Anna Pericchi and Mathilde Moreau
Curators: Fanny Lallart and Céline Poulin

ELGER is a CAC project that lies at the crossroads of art and popular education. It consists of a series of collaborative artistic interventions with groups of children, adolescents and adults in order to rethink the transmission processes as a form, an artistic proposal in itself.

Through dance, writing, singing, costume making, etc., residents and artists have brought to life other types of collective organizations, tried other ways of doing things together. To gather research material, these workshops were followed by a series of interviews with artists, partners, educators, and participants, led by Fanny Lallart and Céline Poulin. The exhibition presents the results of these exchanges and experiments in the shape of an edition designed by Morgane Masse, and of some of the artworks produced during the workshops.

In 2020-2021, ELGER featured initiatives carried out locally by artists with the preschool and elementary school Aprinivilla of Avrainville, the elementary school Roger Vivier of Marolles-en-Hurepoix, the André Malraux elementary school of Villiers-sur-Orge, the middle school Jean Zay of Morsang-sur-Orge, the middle school Roland Garros of Saint-Germain-lès-Arpajon and the Fleury-Mérogis detention center for men. In 2021-2022, ELGER occurred at the preschool Alphonse de Lamartine of Saint-Michel-sur-Orge, the elementary school Paul Langevin of Saint-Germain-lès-Arpajon, the middle school Roland Garros of Saint-Germain-lès-Arpajon, the youth club of Bruyères-le-Châtel, the EDI (youth training and vocational structure) Repères of Brétigny sur Orge, the Fleury-Mérogis detention center for women and the Federation Habitat et Humanisme—Emergency accommodation for asylum seekers (HUDA) in Bonnelles.
The exhibition, co-produced by the Théâtre Brétigny, is designed in response to the season cycles “La beauté du Geste” and “Si loin si proche” dedicated to collaborative practices and shared creative dynamics in dance and theatre.

How to deconstruct the vertical dynamics of a group? How to redefine the usual polarities that traditionally oppose the teacher and the learner? How to level all knowledge? Those are some of the questions that were explored during the different workshops.

ELGER ran at the same time and in collaboration with another project led by the art center around pedagogy: l’Ǝcole. True research in action, l’Ǝcole is co-constructed by its participants over the course of their discussions. How do we create a school within which the means of transmission are neither top-down nor authoritarian? Reflections on the pedagogical contents and structure of l'Ǝcole are shared: who teaches what and how? Different but connected by similar ideas, ELGER and the Ǝcole were able to nurture one another in their respective experimentations.

Pronounced in French “Elles gèrent” (“They’re handling it”), ELGER refers to the methodologies of auto-determination established by various feminist movements since the 1970s. Indeed, their thoughts have enabled us to become fully aware of what defines us and brought us tools to think about the circulation of speech and power, especially through the always renewed attention they bring to horizontal transmission as an act of self-defense. Influenced by feminist thinkers and pedagogues such as bell hooks or Audre Lorde, ELGER aligns itself with that history. That is also why we have chosen to invite only women, whose work sometimes directly references those ideals.

ELGER is also influenced by popular education theories and therefore inscribes itself within that heritage, unknown within the art sector. The prospective work of the artist Marie Preston, and her book Inventer l’école, penser la co-création [Inventing the school, thinking co-creation] infuses our research. In fact, the investigation of Marie Preston within open schools, public programs thinking co-education, puts forward specific tools allowing group work:

“To exist as a collective force, each group needs to decide on founding motions specific to its functioning. This supposes that “artifices”, “institutions” are employed. The artifice “tries to suppress the arrangements that, in a set situation, block, lock our capacity of action.” It consists of inventing new habits and believing in their potentially transformative effect. It forces “shifts” and obliges us to think of what seems “natural”. For Fernand Oury, the term “institution” designates “what we institute together based on constantly evolving realities”: “The simple rule that permits ten tykes to use the soap without fighting is already an institution” [...] In institutional pedagogies and in co-creation, the training and functioning of the group participate in research-actions and research-creations by being fully integrated to the artistic and pedagogic process. The group’s self-reflection and everyone’s implication in its running impulses a democratic dynamic. Popular education and institutional pedagogies give us technical and theoretical tools that permit this collective future. Why is it necessary? Because phenomenon that happen within a group are the same that we find in our societies. These favor individuality, where relationships are tainted by power dynamics, by different relationships to language, or by processes of cultural, economic or gender related domination. In 1986, Félix Guattari said in a conference about “Education and its networks” that it is first necessary to “reinvent machines of sociality, […] at the most elementary level, in order to reinvest those forms of organization capable of handling the biggest issues of society.”[1]

Based on this observation, every artist and educator has incorporated an “artificial” process into their workshops to experiment alternative ways of being together. Besides, the heritage of feminist thinking and popular education are also interesting to us in their capacity to think differently about the traditional categorization of knowledge. The deconstruction of what traditionally opposes knowledge known as “legitimate” (to the artistic and educational institutions) and those illegitimate, has also been a path explored through the workshops by offering, for example, to practice domestic danse, fan art, nail art, or even by learning how to interrupt each other.

ELGER is carried by the idea, utopic but nonetheless crucial, that at a small scale, we find the same dynamics that guide society at large. Developing other types of collective organizations in order to try new ways of doing together is an experience of strong political emancipation.

Fanny Lallart and Céline Poulin

Translation: Louise Ledour

Notes:

[1] Extract of Marie Preston, Inventer l’école, penser la co-création [Inventing the school, thinking co-creation], dir. Marie Preston & Céline Poulin, Ed. Tombolo Presses and CAC Brétigny, 2021.


The “ELGER” exhibition is co-produced with the Théâtre Brétigny. The ELGER project is part of the “Contrat Territorial d'Éducation Artistique et Culturelle” (CTEAC) of Cœur d'Essonne Agglomération with the DRAC Île-de-France and the Academy of Versailles. It is run in partnership with Massage Production, which is supported by the Essonne Department. In 2020-2021, ELGER featured initiatives carried out locally by artists with the preschool and elementary school Aprinivilla of Avrainville, the elementary school Roger Vivier of Marolles-en-Hurepoix, the elementary school André Malraux of Villiers-sur-Orge, the middle school Jean Zay of Morsang-sur-Orge, the middle school Roland Garros of Saint-Germain-lès-Arpajon, and the Fleury-Mérogis detention center for women in partnership with the SPIP (Service Pénitentiaire d'Insertion et de probation de l'Essonne) and in collaboration with the MAC VAL. In 2021-2022, ELGER featured initiatives carried out locally by artists with the preschool Alphonse de Lamartine of Saint-Michel-sur-Orge, the elementary school Paul Langevin of Saint-Germain-lès-Arpajon, the middle school Roland Garros of Saint-Germain-lès-Arpajon, the municipal reception center for young people of Bruyères-le-Châtel, the Fleury-Mérogis detention center for women in partnership with the SPIP (Service Pénitentiaire d'Insertion et de probation de l'Essonne) and the Federation Habitat et Humanisme—Emergency accommodation for asylum seekers (HUDA) in Bonnelles. The ELGER project was part of “l'été culturel” (the cultural summer) of Cœur d'Essonne Agglomération in 2021. As such, it benefited from the support of the DRAC Île-de-France and the Essonne Department, and was part of the “Plein Soleil / Summer of art centers” program led by d.c.a.


Fanny Lallart (born in 1995 in Lyon) works and lives in Marseille and is an artist, writer and publisher. She graduated from l’École nationale supérieure d'arts de Paris-Cergy in October 2019. Her final school project was an open radiophonic space dedicated to dialogue. She has been developing a critical work for a few years through collective work and writing. She published her master’s thesis as a fanzine called 11 texts on free work, art and love in which she questions our relationship to work, drawing on the thoughts of female authors such as Elsa Dorlin, Sara Ahmed and Sarah Schulman. She is the co-founder of Show, a participatory student journal. In addition, she co-created “Minimarket” with Thily Vossier, a cycle of exhibition in a minimarket of Lyon from 2016 to 2019. In 2021 and 2022, Fanny Lallart was artist in residence at CAC Brétigny. She is currently in residence at Triangle–Astérides in Marseille.

Juliette Beau Denès graduated in 2020 from the École nationale supérieure d'arts de Paris-Cergy (ENSAPC). She is a writer and a photographer. She works specifically on self-portrait (photographic and written) and reflects on self-image as a tool for emancipation and auto-fiction. In 2020, she integrated the Master of Literary Creation of University Paris 8 Vincennes—Saint-Denis and she is part of the student participatory magazine Show. As a youth educator outside of her work as an artist, Juliette is used to working with children.

Morgane Brien-Hamdane graduated from the ebabx—école supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux in 2019. Her practice is centered on dance and writing; she conducts workshops dedicated to the psychotherapeutic approaches of the body in squats and in associative backgrounds. As a researcher within the dance department of the University Paris 8 Vincennes—Saint-Denis, she is writing a book about the link between dance as a domestic practice and the somatic practices as a model for a new form of pedagogy.

A 2018 graduate of the Haute École des Arts du Rhin, Laura Burucoa has focused on practices that take shape around the transmission of knowledge and the ways of creating history through video, performance, writing, and the design of collective situations. She became especially interested in the issues and modes of communicating, telling stories, and working together after a number of experiences as an activity leader for children at holiday camps and an official guide (at the Rencontres d'Arles in the summer of 2015 and MAC VAL since 2019). Imagining the work of art in its habitat and working on the contexts of production, circulation, and public outreach are the significant elements in each of her projects. She has also taken part in several group shows as an artist or curator (CRAC Alsace, Syndicat Potentiel, Hangar 9, Casino Luxembourg, etc.).

Pauline Lecerf works and lives in Paris. She graduated in 2016 from the Haute École des arts du Rhin (HEAR) and participated in 2018 to the research program “Création & Mondialisation” of the Offshore School of Shanghai. She makes radiophonic pieces, drawings, performances and publications. Through varied mediums, she explores with poetry and humor the relationships between tensed terms (the precise/the blurry, the worrying/the comforting, understanding/not understanding). Pauline is also known for “Tomber oui, souffrir non” (“Fall yes, suffer no”), created in 2019 with Adélaïde Gandrille and Flore Magnier, parkour plotters, a free class-performance of 1 hour 15 minutes dedicated to the techniques allowing to fall on the ground without hurting oneself (too) much.

Vinciane Mandrin graduated in 2018 from École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon (Ensba Lyon). She has a multi-faceted practice that uses writing as a starting point. She works on ways of thought, with an artistic grammar, defense and escape strategies and distort assignations. She uses performance art, edition and sound to share her work. She also often participates in roundtables, reviews, fanzines, radiophonic shows… She created in 2018 the intersectional feminist collective Cybersistas, a research group based on discrimations within art schools. Lately, she has been animating workshops around feminist self-defense and performances in art schools, in hand with Nino André and the collective Fouhét-Cù, workshops around issues of feminist self-defense and performance in art schools (ISBA Besançon, ENSAD Paris, ENSAPC, ESACM ...). She recently showed her last performative piece, Cabaret Quelconque, at the BF15 (Lyon).

Zoé Philibert was born in 1991 in Albi and currently works and lives in Montreuil. A 2016 graduate from the École nationale supérieure d'arts de Paris-Cergy (ENSAPC), Zoé writes texts that she publishes on her websites and in homemade editions. She also creates posters and performances and directs since 2016 the web-serie WAFA that showcases the warm-ups of a group of “gigoteurs” (“wrigglers”) searching for “new movement”. Her work also incorporates “concert-tutorials”, “partitions-texts to dance”, “pogo-poems” and collective dance workshops. Dance and the practice of movement quickly appeared to her as an obvious continuation of poetry actions. The notion of group can be found in all of her projects, for example, the group of people she works with forms a true gang.