Overview

Manières de faire, façons d’agir (Ways of Doing, Ways of Being) is an artistic and political research and experimentation platform based on the following assumption: as art draws its tools and methodologies from all existing epistemological fields, it is now more than ever a field for experimentation in our ways of doing and being, and as a result, a powerful agent for social transformation. Designed to be practical - an activity, a praxis - art comes from and produces life and collective forms, transmission of knowledge and ignorance, ways of doing and ways of being. Working to analyse and identify the challenges of this situation such as we perceive it in our environment, both through experience and intellect, using both analysis of existing artistic practices and the humanities’ theoretical tools, the questions broached in this research and the objectives set, are pragmatic: Do artists today have the power to create practices for “concern” or “affection”  which aim to create activities which cannot be categorised yet are economically and politically disconcerting - indeed effective but with “uncertain success”? How can artistic practices propose a different eco-sophy and another eco-praxis than those based on a separation of fields of practice but also epistemological fields? What does it mean to go beyond separations such as those between theory and practice, nature and culture, intimate and collective, and lastly between “self-care” in Foucault’s sense and “care for others” in the sense of care theorists?

Research results

The programme includes around thirty members. Two lectures were given. “Le jardin comme microcosme et cosmos” (The Garden as Microcosm and Cosmos) on 11 April 2016 by Fay Zika; and “Aloïs Riegl et la notion de l’attention: un moment fort dans une histoire du regard” (Aloïs Riegl and the Concept of Attention: A Key Moment in the History of Viewing) on 19 March 2018 by Nikos Daskalothanasis. In May 2018, two days of events and performances including a collective writing workshop took place in Thessaloniki, Greece. This gave rise to a collaboration between TALM seminar students and students from the Athens School of Fine Arts.

Connection to the curriculum

This research programme was the theme of an annual seminar bearing the same name organised between 2015 and 2020. A series of workshops was organised with guest artists: RSVP (Please, be my guest) in 2016, Myriam Lefkowitz in 2017, Beatrice Balcou in 2019, and Marie Preston in 2020. Two research trips to the Athens School of Fine Arts were organised in 2017 and in 2018, and two conferences were held in 2016 and 2018.

Programme information

• Campus: TALM-Angers.
• Professor : Vanessa Théodoropoulou.
• Duration of the programme : 2015-2020.
• Partners :
  • Athens School of Fine Arts;
  • Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers;
  • la Ferme du Buisson.
• Funding: TALM.