Investigation
& Documents

La philosophie du langage ordinaire héritière de Wittgenstein et de Cavell et l’anthropologie (visuelle) qui voudrait s’en inspirer peuvent être vues comme une éducation du regard qui passe par une modification de la manière dont on voit les choses. Dans le cadre de ces journées d’étude, il s’agira de se demander ce que nous appelons « modifier sa manière de voir » (la sienne propre et celle d’autrui) en prêtant attention aux usages que nous faisons – dans nos enseignements, nos oeuvres et nos apprentissages – des (suites d’) images que tour à tour nous regardons, montons et montrons." Yves Erard, linguiste, UNIL. Les journées sont organisées à Lausanne par Panthéon Paris 1 Sorbonne et l'Université de Lausanne, avec notamment pour invités Sandra Laugier, Joëlle Zask, le GdRA, Simon Frey, etc.

Christophe Rulhes est invité à Vileurbanne le 7 juin pour la journée de "La Fabrique du témoignage oral". Alors que la discipline historique ne cesse de penser ses responsabilités et engagements, cette journée interprofessionnelle a pour objectif de rassembler des chercheurs en sciences sociales et des acteurs culturels et patrimoniaux, autour de la production et des usages différenciés du témoignage oral selon les contextes historiques, géographiques et sociaux, et les champs disciplinaires et professionnels. Elle est le fruit d’une réflexion commune menée depuis plusieurs mois par différents chercheurs mais aussi des réseaux et institutions culturelles et patrimoniales, en particulier Memorha, Le Rize, le centre des musiques traditionnelles de Rhône-Alpes et le service ethnologie de la DRAC Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.

 

 

 

> Lien vers la page du Centre des Musiques Traditionelles Rhône-Alpes

Le 14 novembre 2016 nous étions au Sénat. Il me semble que le référentiel des droits culturels devrait s’imposer à nous d’évidence (artistes, acteurs et opérateurs culturels, programmateurs, élus) tant il se base sur les fondamentaux de la liberté humaine des personnes en terme d’arts et d’expressions. Il rejoint le meilleur des courants culturalistes, perspectivistes et structuralistes des anthropologues, et ses acteurs et philosophes devraient peut-être le rapprocher du pragmatisme américain et des courants pédagogiques, écologiques et artistiques alternatifs de la fin du 19ème et du début du 20ème siècle : Montessori, Frenet, Dewey, Duncan, Steiner, Black Mountain College, etc. Plutôt que d’en clamer la prétendue nouveauté, il serait sans doutes bon de l’enraciner dans la longue histoire continuiste et (peut-être) cumulative des droits humains et culturels des personnes, qui embrasse les sphères des arts, des sciences, de l’éducation ; de la santé des âmes et des corps avec ses avatars modernes que sont la médecine, la psychanalyse et la psychiatrie ; de l’ordinaire, du style et du spirituel, avec là-aussi ses avatars récents que sont les grands monothéismes ; mais aussi les autres façons d’être au monde ailleurs qu’en occident ou quelque part sous l’occident. Et bien sûr, réfléchir à la participation, décoloniser l’histoire de toute prétention progressiste, remettre en cause et justicier les colonialismes, nationalismes et impérialismes… bref, un gouffre, une montagne, un océan, des paradigmes à franchir et à déconstruire. De belles batailles en perspective pour 2017. Quoiqu’il en soit, nous furent honorés et très intéressés par l’invitation faite au Sénat à Paris pour discuter ce « nouveau référentiel ». Maintenant inscrit dans la loi, nous souhaitons qu’il génère actions, réflexions et échanges. 

C.R.

> Vers le site de la sénatrice Sylvie Robert et des prises de parole filmées du colloque

On Tuesday October 15, 2013, 7.30pm, in Marseille, France 150 plates of aligot (i.e. mashed potatoes and fresh cheese from Aubrac, a French dish from Averyon) were eaten in rue Pastoret, in a city which usually deliciously smells of saffron-flavoured semolina, spicy pastilla or fish dishes. Bertrand Davenel, PR officer at Théâtre du Merlan, instigated this unusual meal. Men and ideas circulate, dishes are passed around but nothing is held captive.

 

How could the thinking of pragmatist art philosopher Joëlle Zask—whom Christophe Rulhes had wanted to meet for so long—and the members of the GdRA—art buffs, fond of cultural democracy, participation and John Dewey, as Zask is—get together for a while? By organizing a gigantic “aligot party” in one of Marseille’s streets, at the foot of a flat crowded with an amazing audience of people keen on philosophy, performing arts and meetings, gathered for a two-voice conference—verging on free communication and talk—lead by Zask and Rulhes. Fiction, reality, characters, the public, experience, emancipation, so-called “good” and “bad” culture were among the topics discussed, with texts by Edward Sapir and Joëlle Zask as a backdrop.

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(The Mediterranean centre for human sciences and the Mediterranean laboratory of sociology)

Collaboration and exchanges have been established between Christophe Rulhes and researchers, scholars and students from the Mediterranean laboratory of Sociology (LAMES) and the Department of Sociology of University Aix-Marseille. Together, they question such issues as the sense of place, the notion of boundary, the constitution of a person, etc.

These interviews and meetings then gave birth to “Rencontres à VIFS” (Lively Meetings with Livings). They took place in 2013 (with the collaboration of Théâtre du Merlan) as a link between Arts and academic Research in order to decompartmentalise each approach and show knowledge—in the field of sociology, mostly—under a different light.

The GdRA relishes inviting the general public to meet, share and exchange ideas on issues that may be interesting to one and all. So on Tuesday October 22, 2013 Pr. Sylvia Girel (sociologist, specialised in arts and culture, LAMES), Gabriel Mattéi (student preparing a M.A in sociology at University Aix-Marseille) and Constance de Gourcy (Lecturer, Department of Sociology, University Aix-Marseille, researcher working on new forms of territoriality in a migratory context, LAMES) discussed the notion of the person in relation to the everyday and theatre and tackled the formidable yet funny question: What is a person?

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On May 23, 2013, the students preparing a M.A. in ethnology organised a symposium that questioned the perspectives emerging from the putting together of two ways of seeing the world: art and anthropology. Through the testimonies of various artists and researchers, they wanted to explore the back and forth movement between these two fields, their fusion even. Can ethnology become artistic material? In the same way, can art provide tools and perspective to construct anthropological knowledge? They invited Christophe Rulhes who talked about the GdRA’s experience, the way he works with Julien Cassier, the anthropological horizon opened by the company’s work and the investigation he carries out. That day, Rulhes got to know the work of Charles Robinson with whom he fruitfully talked in the conference room, in the lobbies, in the metro.

Charles Robinson is the author of Dans les cités, among other novels. The book tells the story of an ethnologist sent in a mission in the suburban area of Paris. The task is to bring back nice instructive portraits that are to go with the official speeches on the local project of urban renovation. He based his novel on an 800-page fieldwork journal. Literature is one of the various ways to explore and observe the world, populations, structures, interactions and individuals. This method inherited from the real, but struggles with it as well. However, one difference has to be pointed out here: the places, structures and individuals Robinson describes do not exist, nor the fieldwork and no investigation has been carried out. Fictitious investigation. Reality of subjection. Here’s something that caught the GdRA’s attention.

 

http://disciplinesdissipees.tumblr.com/programme

http://charles-robinson.blogspot.fr

 

1963-2013, from Théâtre Populaire de Lorraine to Centre Dramatique National: round tables and debates gathering artists, scholars and people involved in politics and in the decentralisation of theatre put a spotlight on the peculiar story of this place of creation and its perspective for the future. The first meeting took place in 2013, at Théâtre du Bois, Thionville. It gathered Robert Abirached (writer, professor emeritus, former director of Theatre and Performance when Jack Lang was the Minister of Culture), Mathieu Bauer (musician, stage director, director of CDN-Nouveau Théâtre de Montreuil) Christophe Rulhes (musician, stage director, an EHESS ethnologist who founded the GdRA-Groupe de Recherches Artistiques, i.e. Group of Artistic Research), Pr. Emmanuel Wallon (Paris Ouest-Nanterre University/Université Catholique de Louvain-La-Neuve), Bérangère Vantusso (stage director, artistic director of la Mauvaise Graine company) and Jean-Marc Adolphe (journalist, editor of the cultural review Mouvement). Stage directors and former theatre directors Jacques Kraemer, Charles Tordjman, Stéphanie Loïk, Laurent Gutmann along with Jean Boillot, present director of NEST also took part in the debate. Rulhes and Abirached had an impassioned talk on “the nature of theatre”. Rulhes, who began his speech with a discussion on Jean Clottes’ works, on cave art and the spectacular and shamanic hypothesis that goes with it, insisted on the importance of broadening the gamut of work comparison in order to go beyond the high-brow European-centred definition of theatre. Abirached then reminded him that he hadn’t waited for Rulhes’ remark to do so. Adolphe was thrilled and fuelled the debate. The talk went on long after that, around a drink; the three men eventually seemed to share the same viewpoint.

 

http://www.nest-theatre.fr/spectacles/50-ans-apres-la-creation-du-tpl

At Cité Maison de Théâtre, Marseille, Andrée and Florence Lloret often wonder about how reality relates to their theatre. They thus instigated exchanges with other companies on such issues as document, text and writing. In 2012, during the first international Biennale of “the Writing of the Real”, the Cité invited the GdRA and Christophe Rulhes to take part in a meeting hosted by Tania Moguilevskaia (Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle), which also gathered Jean-Marc Adolphe, editor of Movement, Mireille Perrier (stage director and actress), Jean-Michel Van den Eeyden (stage director – L’Ancre, Charleroi, Belgium), Michel André and Florence Lloret.

 

http://www.maisondetheatre.com/biennale-des-ecritures-du-reel/incursions-dans-la-litterature/

 

On Saturday May 7, 2011, after he performed in Singularités ordinaires at Théâre du Merlan, Marseille, Christophe Rulhes impassionedly talked with documentary maker Régis Sauder whose work Rulhes deeply admires. Later on, Sauder collaborated with Benoît Bonnemaison-Lafitte, a member of the GdRA. Moreover, on that day, psychiatrist and anthropologist Vincent Girard joined the discussion. With him, Rulhes talked about portraiture, theatre, fiction and schizophrenia. Though he wasn’t aware of it at the time, Vincent Girard then became the playwright of SUJET, the play the GdRA was preparing at the time. Since then, his work on schizophrenia, characterised by a strong will to give the floor to people and give a voice to the self-determination of those who suffer from this disease, has been influencing the GdRA’s theatre. And obviously, the exchanges between Christophe and Vincent still go on today.

 

http://tamtamsoie.net/realisateurs/regis-sauder/

 

“The crisis of representation is frequently invoked in relation to politics, while it is in fact general and global; it impacts scientific fields — researchers struggling to renew their questions and methods — and it is an extension of this crisis that has been troubling, for more than two centuries now, the world of art, in its quest for political relevance and renewed links with the social sciences. Our difficulties in representing what we are and what we are to become, as well as the dire importance of being able to do so, have been particularly highlighted by the environmental crisis. Debates over the causes and extent of climate change, and hence over whether radical changes in lifestyle are required, have been generated by a multiplicity of ways of reading (political, economic, social, etc.) that are unduly compartmentalized.

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("The Tuesdays of Action-Research" Laura Jouve, EHESS, French School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences)
 

In 2010, at Laura Jouve’s invitation, the GdRA took part in the “Mardis de la recherche-action” where researchers and doctorate students discuss such questions as: how can participative observation and the researcher’s involvement in his fieldwork be implemented? In what way can a relationship be established between the researcher and the actors of his fieldwork? How to account for the difficult collaboration between the academic sphere and the artistic, cultural, social and political ones? What do “researchers” and “actors” gain by this collaboration? To what extent can a collective construction of knowledge be built? What would the conditions for applied research and reflective action be? Ever since that first encounter, Laura Jouve and the GdRA have never missed an opportunity to meet and together, they keep on discussing that kind of issues.

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Christophes Rulhes has been reading the works of Bruno Latour (philosopher and anthropologist) for almost twenty years.

On Tuesday May 4, 2010, the GdRA was invited by Laura Jouve at EHESS, Paris, France as part of “les mardis de la recherche-action” (The Tuesdays of Action-Research), 9.00am-12.pm, Room 11, 105 Boulevard Raspail, Paris. The aim was to discuss the linkage between sciences, arts, theatre and politics. During the seminar, the GdRA met Chantal Latour.

On Thursday May 6, 2010, Bruno Latour attended a performance of the GdRA’s Singularités ordinaires at Théâtre Sylvia Monfort, Paris. That was how Latour and the collective began to exchange ideas.

On Staurday June, 5 2010 Latour attended the premiere of the GdRA’s, Robert, Arlette, Act 2, a play commissioned by Excentriques Festival, featuring 180 singers. Once introduced to one another, they started talking right way.

On Thursday April 7, 2011, Bruno Latour and Valérie Pihet invited the GdRA at Sciences Po., Paris where they meet students preparing a M.A. in “Experimention in Arts and Politics” (a degree in the tradition of James, Lippmann or Dewey’s pragmatism). Those who attended the SPEAP seminars were: Philippe Descola, Antoine Hennion, Isabelle Stenger, Anne Christine Taylor, etc. Researchers whose works the GdRA is very interested in.

April 2011: as part of an investigation they were conducting, SPEAP and the GdRA wanted to develop a project together. Other artists are in touch with SPEAP, such as Olivier Cadiot, Lucien Taylor, Armin Linke, Harun Farocki, Xperiment…

On May 21, 2011, 5.00pm, the GdRA invited Bruno Latour in Toulouse to share the floor with them during a conference at Ombres Blanches bookshop given as part of the performances of Singularités ordinaires and Nour at Théâtre Garonne and l’Usine.

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