Master Art Practice - Critical Tools

Professors/Coordination: Eric Angenot, Marcel Berlanger, Didier Demorcy, Eleanor Ivory Weber,Magali Michaux, Guy Woueté

As of September 2022, the Master's Degree in Art Practice, Critical Tools will be articulated around 2 distinct workshops:

L.I.E.N.S.= (In French: Places, Interdisciplinarity, Ecology, Necessity, Systems)

The Master L.I.E.N.S. welcomes the intranquillity of artistic practices and individuals who engage through the arts in society. It is a space for the co-construction of knowledge and experience where each person is considered an actor in the pedagogy and the collective, working on the multiple links that will allow the development of their personal practice. The L.I.E.N.S. Master's degree covers a wide range of artistic practices, including practices that do not aim to fit into the usual structures of the art world, but to act in other fields (ecological, social, associative, etc.). It is an inclusive and benevolent space of experimentation that allows everyone to find singular and emancipating paths through collaboration rather than competition.

PLACES: There is no practice without a place of inscription for that practice. Being aware of how places and contexts impact our practices allows us to choose where we want to inscribe them and how we want to act as artists. The L.I.E.N.S. Master's degree postulates that each artist has the possibility of choosing or inventing the places and contexts of their practice.

INTERDISCIPLINARITIES: How can heterogeneous disciplines dialogue, collaborate, interact? We are interested in the different forms that the crossing of disciplines in and out of art can take. Convinced that these crossings can allow the emergence of new forms, adapted to the stakes of the current world and allow to widen the possibilities of acting as artists.

ECOLOGY: For us, ecology is not a theme, it is a necessity. The need to build our practices taking into account the links that connect them to the world, to think things in interaction. To work on the ecology of our practices, it is to conceive them connected to their environmental, social, economic, political incidences. It is to admit that any work is constitutive of a vast network of links, and that each of our acts transforms the world, thus engaging our responsibilities towards the whole of the living.

NECESSITY: necessity refers to the intrinsic subjectivity of artistic practices, to what deeply pushes us to move as artists, and to act outside established norms. In the Master L.I.E.N.S., we are attentive to the question of the meeting between individual and collective necessities, and the way in which the one can be articulated to the other. We conceive the possibility of individual emancipation as intrinsically linked to collective emancipation.

SYSTEMS: We are currently going through a deep crisis of systems: democratic, productivist, neo-colonial, patriarchal,... The Master L.I.E.N.S. postulates that artistic practices offer a possibility of active deconstruction of existing systems of domination and a propositional force that allows to imagine and experiment other systems. We conduct collective reflection on the possibility of building more collaborative, open, and inclusive systems.

Team:

The pedagogy of the L.I.E.N.S. Master is collective, the teachers work as a team and are in constant dialogue. Our positions in the art world, our practices and our sensibilities are diverse. We cultivate these differences because they allow for a broader dialogue around student practices and art issues. This plurality of points of view is essential for us. It relativizes the points of view of each person and allows us to escape from exclusive and excluding conceptions of art. It encourages students to find and assume their own personal path. For a more inclusive follow-up, each student will be followed more precisely by one of the members of the team, to whom he or she will be able to refer in priority for organizational and other questions. The teaching team of the Master L.I.E.N.S.: Eric Angenot, Marcel Berlanger, Eleanor Ivory Weber, Magali Michaux, Guy Woueté.

Pedagogy:

The meeting: At the beginning of the year, a series of activities allow each student to get to know the group. This step is fundamental, even for students who are already present at the bachelor erg. These activities allow us to get to know each other's practice and to informally define the objectives for the year. It is a time when all the students of the Master are gathered.

The follow-up of the practices: Depending on the period and the number of students, the follow-up of practices is organized individually or in small groups. We privilege collective exchange around practices and postulate that looking at the practices of others is a way to better understand and develop one's own practice. We insist that students start a concrete practice very quickly, which allows us to exchange on what is there rather than on intentions.

Discussions: The year is punctuated by informal discussions on the issues of art, on practices, references or current events. These discussions allow everyone to meet and get to know each other, to exchange around personal and societal issues.

The exhibition moments: The exhibition is an important axis of the L.I.E.N.S. Master's program. We consider the exhibition as a medium in its own right and encourage each student to experiment with different exhibition possibilities during the Master's program. To this end, we organize group exhibitions, both inside and outside the school, and encourage students to organize their own exhibitions in small groups in extracurricular contexts of their choice. 

Mediation: The pedagogy of the L.I.E.N.S. Master's program is accompanied by a reflection on the mediation of student practices. What visibility should be given to their practice? How to do it? How to position oneself as an artist? How to choose the most appropriate contexts for the dissemination of one's work? We are conducting a reflection to allow each person to better identify the stakes of his or her own practice and his or her own positioning as an artist, while taking care to deconstruct existing schemas. This should allow each person to assert their own freedom, and to experiment with sometimes non-institutionalized paths.

Evaluation: The evaluation is continuous. It takes into account the development of the student's personal practice as well as his or her active participation in the various projects of the Master's program. 

Linked courses : Art Practice Seminar, History and Theory of the Arts Seminar, Making A Fecund Portal, Reading, Listening, Speaking Seminar