weS.A.N.K. artistic research project (2016 – 2018)
weS.A.N.K. on the RESEARCH CATALOGUE
At the end of 2016, Vincent Roumagnac invites the architect, researcher and curator Emmanuelle Chiappone-Piriou to establish a research platform on the future of the relationships between theater and architecture, as part of his doctorate on the evolution of theater thinking from the anthropocenic perspective of a time ecology reset.
The purpose of the collaborative research process, lasting one and a half years, is to design and develop architectural prototypes of the stage of the future. This project has been developed from the speculative study of the necessary transformations of Western scenic thinking, and its production of imaginaries, in response to contemporary planetary issues in terms of climate and technological conditioning.
The research project is simultaneously implemented in the fields of academic artistic research and transdisciplinary experimentation in contemporary art. Its purpose is to cultivate potentials, to design imaginaries and to produce aesthetic prototypes by crossing various fields such as performing and visual arts, architecture, artistic research, new media, contemporary philosophy, dramaturgy and future studies, among others.
In the context of the current planetary ecological upheaval, the research group sets itself the task of speculating on new horizons / plateaus for the experimental exploration of the stage and architecture to come.
The research is methodologically projected via five collaborative sessions: in autumn 2017 in Japan, then in 2018 in France, Finland, Spain and South Korea.
During these collaborative sessions Roumagnac and Chiappone-Piriou, together with artists and architects invited locally, initiate the design and production, and the critical discussion, of what they call “prototypes of the stage of the future”.
Finally, in November 2018, all the prototypes created during the four sessions will be gathered and re-assembled under the title weSANK STAGED for a public event in Helsinki.
This public presentation of the research project will take the form of an installation / exhibition / mise en scène, and will also be examined as the second and final artistic part of Roumagnac’s doctorate.
Collaborative sessions
From general themes – including stage, architecture and time ecology, big data and post-industrial landscapes, dystopian narratives and daily rituals, networks, climate, memory, energy and affect… – the spontaneous conceptualization and manufacture of prototypes sought to explore our techno-sensitive and geographical conditions and, from this perspective, to coalesce physical and informational objects with a scenic dimension.
At the crossroads of theatrical exploration and architectural research, the collaborative session develops simultaneously on two levels: that of the design of prototypes, according to a protocol combining theoretical interventions, manufacturing, writing and installation; and that, both below and beyond the first, of the search for a possible performativity of the whole project.
Working on interstices and margins, testing the disciplinary limits while resisting the temptation of their disintegration, the sessions will bring together artists and architects whose practice is characterized by an interrogation on the conditions of its own existence and by exploring the limits of their medium.
weS.A.N.K. Venice [Prologue/Considerings] : 12.5.2017 @Research Pavilion Venice
weS.A.N.K. Tokyo : 16 – 18.11.2017 @Tokyo Arts and Space
weS.A.N.K. Paris: 28 – 30.1.2018 @ Mains d’Oeuvres Saint-Ouen
weS.A.N.K. Helsinki: 2 – 4.3.2018 @ Performing Arts Lab (Etlab)
weS.A.N.K. Barcelona: 16-18.6.2018 @ Institut del Teatre
weS.A.N.K. Daegu: 30.6-2.7.2018 @ Daegu Arts Factory in the frame of PSi#24 Conference
weS.A.N.K. Deep Stage As…: 14-18.11.2018 @ Vapaan Taiteen Tila, Helsinki
EMMANUELLE CHIAPPONE-PIRIOU is an architect and independent curator, based in Paris. She is a PhD candidate at the ATTP, Technische Universität Wien (Austria) and a member of the CIVA Foundation Contemporary Culture & City scientific council. Her work interrogates architecture “at the edge of everything else” and her research and projects are thus situated at the intersection of architecture with other disciplinary fields, amongst which art and computation. Recent projects include research collaborations with artists and architects, amongst which [we]S.A.N.K. led by Vincent Roumagnac; exhibitions (Maître Coeur, Florian Sumi), essays and lectures. In 2017, she has joined AREA Institute as Content Director, to develop a curatorial program devoted to the mutations of architecture in relation to data and robotics, and has been an invited critic at the Plateforme de la création architecturale at the Cité de l’Architecture (Paris). From 2011 to 2016, she was Program curator at the Frac Centre (Orléans, France). She supervised the inaugural curatorial program for the Frac new building and was Assistant curator of the 9th edition of ArchiLab Naturalizing Architecture (2013). She curated Relief(s) (2015) and The City as a Vision (2014), as well as the program of cultural and educational events. She previously collaborated to numerous exhibitions, at the Centre Pompidou and Centre Pompidou-Metz (2009–10), then at OMA/AMO. She has written extensively for exhibition catalogues (Frank Gehry, Centre Pompidou collection, etc.). Emmanuelle holds and Architecture Diploma from ENSAP La Villette (Paris, 2008) and graduated in History of Architecture at Paris 1 University (2010).
weSANK Guests: Simo Kellokumpu, Josselin Vamour, Yusuke Kamata, Guillaume Aubry, Carolina E. Santo, Anne-Valérie Gasc, Emmanuel Guez, Laura Gozlan, Icinori, Sébastien Martinez Barat & Benjamin Lafore, Aurélie Pétrel, Florian Sumi, Aurélien Vernant, Outi Condit, Henna-Riikka Halonen, Edvine Larssen, Maiju Loukola, Tuomo Rainio, Aida Salán Sierra, Begüm Erciyas, Lys Villalba, Cris Argüelles, Edouard Cabay, Mireia c. Saladrigues, Marc Salicrú Julià, Ignacio De Antonio, Rumen Rachev and Woojin Kim.
VINCENT ROUMAGNAC 