Plastir Number 64

UN-GREENING GREEN: EPISTEMOLOGICAL IMBROGLIOS OF A (TOO) FASHIONABLE FETISH

Jens HAUSER is a curator, author, art and media dies scholar who lives and works in Paris and Copenhagen, where he is a researcher at the Medical Museion at the University of Copenhagen. He is also a research fellow at the Medical University of Vienna and a distinguished affiliated faculty member at the Department of Art, Art History and Design at Michigan State University where he co-directs the Bridge Artist-in-Residence Program. He teaches at Danube University in Krems, University of Innsbruck, University of Applied Arts in Vienna, University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, and is a visiting researcher at the École Polytechnique Paris-Saclay. Hauser initiated an interdisciplinary network for ‘Greenness Studies’ and has been working on the concept of ‘green’ for the past thirty years. As a curator, Hauser has organised more than 30 international exhibitions and festivals. According to his most original approach, the entanglement between symbolic green, ontological greenness and performative greening poses challenges across disciplines that provide an epistemological panorama for playful debunking: ‘green’, symbolically associated with the ‘natural’, needs to be addressed as the most anthropocentric of all colors. But there has only been little reflection upon greenness’ migration across different knowledge cultures: Engineers brand ‘green chemistry’ or ‘green biotechnology’ as ecologically benign, while climate researchers point to the ‘greening of the earth’ itself as the alarming effect of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. ‘Green growth’ pretends to reconcile ecological and economic development, meanwhile, the EU new green deal’s taxonomy classifies fossil gas and nuclear energy as ‘green’. Thus, the experimental media arts attempt to ‘un-green greenness’ and deconstruct the ambiguity of its pervasive superficial metaphoricity.

MORE THAN ONE. THE ART OF BEING METASTABLE

Ludovic DUHEM is a philosopher and artist. He teaches philosophy of art and design in various institutions in France and abroad. He is currently research coordinator at the ESAD Valenciennes. His research focuses on the relationship between aesthetics, technique and politics in relation to ecological issues. In design, he works mainly on ecosocial design from a critical perspective informed by social ecology, bioregionalism and mesology. He recently published with Kenneth Rabin, Design écosocial. Conviviality, situated practices and the new commons(It:editions, 2018); with Richard Pereira De Moura, Design of territories. Teaching the bioregion (Eterotopia, 2020) and with Jean-Hugues Barthélémy, Ecology and technology. Redefining progress after Simondon (Matériologiques, 2022). A book is in preparation Crash metropolis. Ecosocial design and the critique of the metropolisation of territories (T&P, 2022). More info: www.ludovicduhem.com. What art could do in the catastrophic situation of the anthropocenic « big disequilibrium »? Instead of giving an ultimate answer or even a set of criteria defining a vocation or a program for the art and the artists, this question is treated through a neither stable or unstable equilibrium, that is to say the metastable equilibrium. But, to understand why the metastable equilibrium is interesting and perhaps crucial for our time, we start from a rethinking of the being as « more than one », that is to say as a constitutive and reciprocal relationship with the milieu, following Simondon‘s and Berque‘s thought. The calling for an « art des milieux » is finally expressed beyond aesthetics in the narrow sense. We share this mesological vision which opens up new perspectives on the management of imbalances and metastable balances in the environment.

AN ART-SCIENCE-INDUSTRY EVENT: THE CREATIVE PLATFORMS

This essay is written as a duo. Edwige ARMAND is an artist-researcher in art at the INP Purpan and is attached to the LARA-Seppia laboratory. Passionate about the history of science and art, and philosophy, her artistic practice combines these different disciplinary fields articulated around the question of techniques and sciences. The modifications of our relationship to reality, subjectivity and the body by techniques and sciences are central axes in her research-creation. The transversality of disciplines allows him to question the processes of creation and the transformations of representations that the arts help to convey. In order to revive the dynamics of art-science relations, which are two fundamental ways of apprehending reality, she co-founded and has chaired since 2016 the association Passerelle Art-Science et Technologie, which works to bring these disciplines closer together, and she is also involved in the Transversale des Réseaux Arts Sciences. Anne ASENSIO has held various executive and design management positions in the automotive industry for 30 years. She was General Manager at General Motors in charge of Design for eight of the group’s brands, and at Renault as Design Director for the Twingo, Clio and Scénic ranges… Anne Assensio joined Dassault Systèmes in 2008 as Vice President of Design Experience.  She created the Dassault Systèmes « Design » function and the Design Studio, bringing together a multidisciplinary team in innovation strategy through design, experience design, « Up Stream Thinking« , design research, design management and consulting. Advocating a participatory approach to new technologies and virtual worlds, the Design Studio supports Dassault Systèmes’ customers in high-growth industries in their need for transformation, digital and sustainable innovation, new business models for a circular economy, and virtuous design processes as a manifestation of their value proposition to their ultimate customers. Imagining alternative scenarios to transform the world we live in into a more sustainable and desirable one, the studio engages in reflection, experimentation and confrontation of cross-approaches between social and technologies through the creation and, ultimately, the installation of design value for the well-being of users, citizens and society. Anne Asensio is also a Knight of the Legion of Honour and an Officer of the Order of Merit. The essential question she poses with Edwige Armand is the following: « In what way does the art-design-science-industry alliance contain within it « possibilities » that would make it possible to imagine alternative narratives to the current techno-centric scenarios, to constitute a new paradigmatic ecosystem in order to rebuild a sustainable way of inhabiting the world? The authors answer this question point by point through various art-science-technology events by approaching creative platforms as models of collaboration, mediation and commitment between artists-technologists-scientists-designers-industry. Within this framework, they question the place and role of design as a process and thought to interrogate the blind spot of the art-science contribution to industry and reciprocally identify what industry does to art and science.

MULTIPLE WATER, BETWEEN ART AND SCIENCE

Stéphanie REISS is an artist and scientist, living and working in Bordeaux France. Her photographies emphasize how Nature is a precious resource, highlighting beauty of water. Her photographer work is exhibited in the International Sea Photographer Festival, Oceanographic Institute, Corderie Royale, Cap-Sciences and belongs also to several private art collections. She recently published a wonderful book “Eau, un regard et des mots” at Editions de La Martinière. Her book is honored by the preface written by H.S.H. Prince Albert II de Monaco. Many scientists (Pierre Léna, Jean-Pierre Luminet, Yves Quéré, Vladimir Ryabinin …) and artists (Anne Queffélec, Carolyn Carlson, Jean Letourneur, Jean-Paul Agosti, Jean-Claude Ellena …) bring their unpublished texts echoing the poetic photographs of Stéphanie Reiss. Her artistic writings are published in several magazines and in the artist books of the painter Jean-Paul Agosti. She is also the author of the book “The hands of wine”. She was active in biomimicry and currently in charge of environment protection (global warming). Chemical engineer (INSA). Marketing and Innovation consultant. Lecturer in engineer universities (Ismans, Les Mines Nancy, ENSCPB). International manager for chemical industries. Events and exhibitions maker – design, production, media management – : « Entre Art et Science, la Création » in Paris France –Palais de la découverte, Institut de France. Backed by Nobel Prize Pierre-Gilles de Gennes and the compositor Marcel Landowski; with the participation of Jean-Pierre Luminet, Jean-Paul Agosti, Michel Cassé, Etienne Klein. Speaking in the first person, she invites us in this article to share a journey of initiation that many authors have taken in her book « EAU, Un regard et des mots » (La Martinière, 2021), a review of which can be found on our website: « I am the cycle that never ends, the origin, your vital necessity, the source of wonder, I am the multiple Water. I graze the infinitely large, speak to the infinitely small, I am the intention of the universe. I am this moving energy carried by our blue planet. I am the ferryman of Life, the source of your Humanity.» These could be the words that Water addresses to us thanks to the author whose photographs offer a poetic vision of water to which artists, scientists and environmental ambassadors associate their texts that amaze or question. What if a poetry of reality allowed us to re-enchant our world?

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