As part of the weekday workshops, two sessions were held at the Domaine de Chamarande, 35 km and thirty minutes from Paris by train. From the Gare d'Austerlitz, the students in VIA FERRATA's graduating class, Nanda Devi, experienced the journey to a remarkable site. Understanding and experiencing that these places are accessible is a way of meeting them, ourselves and the world; the time spent on the journey is also an opportunity to work, reading or listening to a podcast. "Even when I'm watching television, I'm working" said Christian Boltanski. On boarding, students receive a quotation from Dona Haraway in their inbox, taken from her book Staying with the trouble: Making Kin in Chthulucen. Combined with research on Tim Ingold's Brèves histoires de lignes (Brief Stories of Lines), they sketched out the beginnings of a reflection on the multiple relationships between human beings and the world. The 25 young people in the class began their various explorations with that of the plasticity of appearances and the interest of their observations in approaching questions about representation.
We weave links, we know, we think, we form worlds and we tell stories thanks to (and with) other stories, other worlds, other knowledge, other thoughts, other aspirations.
As soon as we arrive, we look, feel and walk along the parkland paths that lead to the Renaissance-style château (transformed over the course of the xvııe, xvıııe and xıxe centuries), its outbuildings and these archives, which are not visible to visitors because they are underground. In fact, the Essonne departmental archives and the Essonne departmental contemporary art fund have taken up residence at a depth of 30 metres spread over 8 levels located precisely beneath the square courtyard of the outbuildings added in the xıxe century. We soon realise that this site, rich in human, architectural, geographical, ecological and artistic history, is also home to a number of trees, most of which have been classified as ‘remarkable species’. This was also an opportunity to talk briefly about the system of contemporary art institutions and public collections, and the principle of inviting an artist to work in a public place, in this case the park. The question of the garden also raises a number of questions, and provides an opportunity to evoke Philippe Descola and ‘mondiation’.
Guided by our curiosity, we embark on an expedition of the manifest and the speculative, the visible and the olfactory, the audible and the tactile, traces of the past and marks of the contemporary. Strolling along the various paths, we discover together the works of contemporary art acquired by the Essonne department. We discuss. During the group walks, the students individually collect a variety of materials such as photographs, written notes, sketches, sound recordings, film recordings, collections of plants available on the ground - chestnuts and their husks, branches or pieces of wood, fragments of minerals found - as well as the free documentation offered by the site. Aware of the immediacy of impressions and the creative potential of the material and images they collect, these artists experiment with the plasticity of the here and now of experience, as much as with the notion of presence.
The second part of the project will be carried out in the workshop the following session, based on the physical and psychological experience. What plastic material can be drawn from all or part of the harvest gathered a week earlier? With no deadline or other specific indication, the two groups were given no instructions other than to produce individual or collective projects. And, in order to do so, they all understood the value of proceeding by organisation and established a temporary personal method.
