'narrative' practices

Teachers : Romane Armand, Joanna Lorho, Nicolas Wouters

educational project

The Atelier Pluridisciplinaire (AP) is a place for experimentation, discovery and opening up to one's own artistic singularity. This involves destabilising the student's comfort zones, both in technical terms and in terms of narrative. This idea of narrative therefore takes on a more important and driving role than in courses where it stems from an artistic production and is present but undoubtedly more secondary.

The specificity of the AP is that it enables students to tackle cross-disciplinary subjects that are not directly linked to a medium. They engage in reflection and take action that crosses over, concerns and feeds into several practices. The workshop also brings these practices together through the cohabitation of students from different disciplines. We reflect together on how to produce a narrative, in practice but also in relation to the theory and cultural background that we are building and sharing collectively.

educational objectives

The AP Narration de bac 2 bridges the gap between the BAC 1 and the BAC 3. It accompanies a progression towards autonomy and the realisation of long-term projects. It involves opening up to oneself and to the outside world, learning to position oneself and one's practice in relation to the outside world and one's own perception of it. The notion of commitment and positioning in relation to the world, its dominant codes and its margins, are central to this. The learning process is progressive, moving from short projects to longer ones. Our multidisciplinary approach sees students move between different artistic practices, including animation, video, photography, performance, comics/illustration and sound, thanks to the versatile profile of our teaching staff. We also insist that students' practices are linked to current events in the arts and the various artistic disciplines. Numerous references are shared, in addition to regular conferences and outings, and everyone's curiosity is a necessity.

We accept the fact that we are working with a “theory” of dramaturgy, we share it, we divert it, we criticise it. In line with what is proposed in BAC1, we think it's a good idea to recognise that there are constants and recurrences in stories, that these recurrences are situated and that to be able to work in an emancipated way, we need to be aware of them and of certain mechanisms.

teaching practices

The pedagogical relationship is at the heart of the workshop: we want to see the work emerge in relation to us and the other students, to see the process take shape week after week. The framework is clear and understandable and is adjusted collectively during group discussions. We insist on attendance (attendance is taken at every session) and on the regularity and activity of all the members of the group.

Sessions alternate between group work and discussions, regular “hang-ups”, presentations to an audience and compulsory meetings with individuals or small groups.

To ensure that the assessments are objective and concerted, we give the students a target whose criteria have been determined and validated collectively (some criteria are non-negotiable). These criteria are supposed to evolve throughout the quadrennium (like cursors) and set the framework for the workshop. During the assessments, we compare our targets with those of the students: in an ideal world, we have more or less the same design (which is relatively the case!). The average of these different targets (the student's, ours) produces a mark out of 20. We want to be transparent about what we are trying to achieve with them in the workshop and we want them to take full responsibility for what they produce and the effects it will have on their assessments. We are looking for a relationship that is as constructive as possible for them: a relationship based on transparency, respect and trust. And as little arbitrariness as possible.