Digital Culture & AudioVisual Challenges

Theoretical Framework:

The crisis of rationalism and empiricism in higher education and research institutions (like the ENS Paris-Saclay) is characterized by a loss of connection with sensory experience, evident in both the teaching of exact sciences and practical applications, along with a gradual standardization of methodologies and gestures, leading to a generalized proletarianization (Stiegler), amidst disciplinary compartmentalization. These institutions inherit legacies from Greco-Roman antiquity, theological discourse, Kantian philosophy, and objectivism, rarely questioning these biases.

Within this context, the establishment of the Scène de Recherche first represented an attempt to strengthen individual agency through artistic practice in response to this "view from nowhere," as expounded by Habermas—thus perpetuating a romantic cliché. However, a rapid evolution has transformed the theater into a place of experimentation leading to potential transindividuation (Simondon), because epistemological individuation is a case of psychic and social individuation that leads to transindividuation.

Research:

The Arts/Sciences university theater « Scène de Recherche » serves to recenter meaning and sensibility at the core of the scientific institution, promoting aesthetics as a distinct regime for knowledge creation and interpretation, in our digital era. Theater offers the possibility for the confrontation of interpretations and thus for epistemogenesis to occur. Epistemology evolves from meta-scientific discourse to a critical discipline analyzing its historical development, contextualizing its methods, approaches, and concepts.What is more, theater does not only deal with the visible but through the performances we are fully returned to the question of the « vivant » (Canguilhem). 

Furthermore, in this Arts/Sciences theater, if there is indeed the play of différance facilitated by the traditional theatrical apparatus (and thus the reconstitution of an audience beyond the one created by mass media (Stiegler)), what we observe are the participatory mechanisms, which materialize regularly in the form of workshops offered by the « Scène de Recherche » and in the form of a diploma year ARRC (Année de Recherche en recherche-création). Those engage artists-researchers-scientists arrangements, in a play of knowledge with a strong sensory dimension, enabling a renewal of pedagogical practices and a « strategy of the edges » (Stiegler) in this institutional environment.

Methods :

My approach to observation is ethno-anthropological, employing participant observation techniques. Additionally, I conduct semi-structured interviews to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the research landscape among students, doctoral candidates, and professors at the ENS. Furthermore, I have created a podcast platform to inform of the experiments conducted by the collaborative endeavors of artists, researchers, and scientists from the Scène de Recherche, facilitating access to these collaborations in an audio-based sensory format.

Description :

To elucidate the experiential aspect, the « Thermodance » workshop serves as an illustrative example. This workshop aims at fostering the construction of knowledge from sensory experiences and dance. By making the modes of representation associated with the discipline of the researchers participating in the workshop visible, it becomes apparent that the enactment of gestures serves to challenge entrenched beliefs inherited from a theological-scientific conception of mathematics through movement. It also served to compensate for an impoverishment of imaginative capacities in computational scientific research. These reflections on the importance of an embodied and sensory interpretation, with gesture as a creative approach, allows for the reintegration of thought within the body, countering the externalization inherent in screen-mediated cognition, which tends to project cognition forward of the body.

Following that line, I would like to present a project I am creating at the Scène de Recherche for doctoral candidates from the Saclay hub. I am implementing an annual arts/sciences experimentation and research program where participants will conduct both theoretical and artistic experiments to experience and animate their research beyond disciplinary boundaries, infusing more creativity, imagination, and meaning into their research endeavors. Participants will form a group that, during monthly meetings, will reflect on the notion of "bricolage" in its broadest sense. They will meet with the artists in residence at the Scène de Recherche and have access to research and creation time in the theater. Participants in the program will be encouraged to share their practices, methods, and expertise, as well as to question the imaginaries associated with their research and discipline. This experimentation will culminate in a free-format presentation in spring 2025. This program is conceived as a form of institutional therapy (Guattari), acting as a pharmacological agent for the institution itself, aiming to create conditions for reasoned and sensitive inter-scientific dialogue, thus embodying a dianoetic approach.