Artifacts studies

Teacher : Ayoh Kré Duchâtelet

This seminar for master's students Master Editorial policy - Design and Politics of the Multiple supports the multidisciplinary workshop.

This course aims to introduce, into the students' curriculum, different approaches from visual studies, cultural studies and a so-called "object-oriented" socio-anthropology. These approaches question the modes of action of images and objects in specific contexts of contemporary society. They are heirs to John Austin's speech act theory, James Gibson's affordance theory and Alfred Gell's anthropological approach. They are interested in the heuristic potential of the notion of device, associated with taking into account the material and technical dimension of social activity (Nicolas Dodier, Janine Barbot, Madeleine Akrich, Jonathan Crary, etc.). They are also heirs to the knowledge, frameworks of thought and perspectives from colonized worlds on which Western thought was nourished during modernity. (Joseph Tonda, Achille Mbembe, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Samir Boumedienne…).

The course also proposes to focus initially on the way in which architectural buildings, technical objects, urban development, legal texts, organizations, speeches, documents, monuments – in short, multiple genres of human fabrications – act on social reality, transform us, make us do things, induce possibilities of action and/or restrict our possibilities of action, allow and prohibit, prevent, change us…and secondly, at the how these devices produce imaginaries in specific socio-cultural contexts. A set of notions constitutes a course lexicon, the notions of this lexicon are mobilized and discussed during the sessions.

The first objective of the course is to make students aware of a pragmatic approach to the agency of artefacts based on contributions from visual studies, cultural studies and the sociology of objects. By the “agency” of artefacts, we mean their capacities to act or to make people act, their powers of transformation of social reality.

The second objective is to problematize these questions by considering that what we make, as artists and designers, is part of complex devices and produces effects far beyond intentions on the world in which we live.

The third objective is to develop methods of inquiry and study that aim to go beyond the theory/practice separation by considering creation as an act that is always situated, involving a political, disciplinary, social, cultural context, a point of view, instruments, a commitment, specific objects and a continuous effort to link theory and practice.

Boards of image collections, called “duck-rabbit” boards, in relation to the subjects seen in class are distributed to students. The articles, excerpts from books and audiovisual documents discussed in class are made available in digital format.