Visité guidée

Visite guidée de l'exposition 'Matières vivantes' samedi 9 et dimanche 10 septembre 2023 à 11h au Pavillon de l'Arsenal, nous y parlerons du projet de recherche de Aléa 'Back to Dirt'.

Paysages du Design @ FRAC Orléans

We are happy to be part of the exhibition "Paysages du Design" curated by Mathias Schwartz-Clauss assisted by Franca Spielmann.

Frac Centre-Val de Loire presents a new exhibition dedicated to women designers. Landscapes of Design is conceived around a selection of works from Domaine de Boisbuchet's exceptional collections. More than a hundred pieces, spanning from furniture to fashion, question the main principles of design: identification, procedures, boundaries... The exhibition brings together works by twentieth-century female pioneers and international contemporary designers, revealing new, more collaborative and nature-oriented approaches to design.

04/02/2022 - 31/07/2022

Human / non-human

November 17th - 27th from 2-6pm.

Lightbulb & Mycelium

Galerie D
43 Rue de la Commune de Paris, Romainville

This exhibition manifests the production and preoccupations of Art, Media, and Technology artist-instructors and close collaborators. The works engage with the origins of life, the perturbation of ecosystems, combinations of the natural and the artificial, as well as new apprehensions of human and non-human kinship. Through diverse media and approaches we explore the perceptible and imperceptible aspects of nature and hope to raise awareness of the connectedness of all life.

Work by Mel O’Callaghan, Bridget O’Rourke, Mathieu-Merlet Briand, Francesca Bonesio, Miriam Josi, Stella Lee Prowse and Nicolas Guiraud.

Matter of context

Laying randomly on a table: a pile of dirt, a block of wood, a loose key, a rubber band, a phone charger, a dried rose, a plastic fruit net, an egg carton.
Imagine you were asked to organize them from “natural” to “artificial”.
Perhaps you put them in two groups. Maybe you find it difficult to separate the two. Where did you put the egg carton? The key? What makes you think that the dirt is natural? What if I told you the dry rose origins in a greenhouse monoculture on another continent and was sprayed with chemicals?

What is natural? What is artificial? A look in the dictionary reveals three definitions of artificial: man-made, false and unnatural. The word “natural” originates from Old French naturel and Latin naturalis meaning “by birth”. The definitions for it are endless, everything non-artificial basically. Ultimately it could be defined as something that ‘exists and evolved within the confines of an ecosystem’.

The previous questions trigger more questions. Why this separation between nature and humans? Aren’t humans part of nature too? When did (or do) we stop being nature? What is human nature? Is everything human-made inevitably artificial? What about hand-made and is machine-made still human-made?

We may also ask why this tendency to fetishize the natural? Aren’t we reinforcing the separation between humans and nature?

It indeed appears that we can’t separate natural and artificial in a definitive way. All materials we interact with are - if not human-made - at least human-touched or human-affected. Rather than two clear categories, it could be more useful to arrange our table in a spectrum of materials sourced from less or more abundant natural resources, less or more manipulated by humans.

We can repeat the exercise and rearrange the table, defining the criteria each time a bit differently, from least to most durable, lowest to highest environmental impact, and so on. It moreover becomes clear that we can’t talk about these materials and objects in isolation of their context. Each has their own story and is part of a bigger system. Unlike often expected, when it comes to design there are no good or bad materials. There are only better or worse material choices depending on the context and the intended use of their application.

materialgame-josi-lee1-small.jpg

‘Matter of context’ is a simple interactive game I came up with together with Stella Lee Prowse to use on the first day of a workshop. Through a multisensory experience, the exercise is meant to provide insight into the importance of thinking about the bigger picture, asking questions and understanding the systems and context that materials exist within.

Sustainable Systems mycelium workshop

As part of the course Sustainable Systems I teach at Parsons Paris, students discovered Mycelium as a material. In a hands-on workshop, they were encouraged to experiment with a variety of discarded organic substrates, such as coffee grounds, shredded paper, cardboard and natural fabric scraps in order to explore different possible characteristics. Photos: Rizq Naherta #sustainablesystems #mycelium