Workshop by Fabrice Sabatier

An art school is not just a sum of students, teachers and administrative staff. An art school is also spaces, equipment, financial means, skills, energies, encounters, interactions, a history, stories, power and domination relationships, successes and failures. An art school is a microcosm, a world in miniature with people, lifestyles, ways of doing things, links, a culture. To trace the microcosmogram of an art school is to make sensitive the small political cosmologies that underlie it, starting from the scale of the individuals, things, relationships and tensions that run through it.

The fundamental objective of data and information visualization is to “make the invisible visible”. The workshop will propose to make visible what crosses the Reims School of Art and Design, using the methods of data visualisation, information representation and cartography. The aim will be to produce a singular knowledge of this place based on quantitative and qualitative data but also on the multiple beings that inhabit it (individuals, objects, plants, spirits, stories, rituals, etc.). The exercise will mainly consist of experimenting with ways of articulating forms of knowledge (analytical and sensitive) and the associated models of representation (diagram, cartography, drawing, document, etc.). How can knowledge and experiences that are deployed on variable scales and formats be transposed onto a single medium, or trans-formed, in order to reveal an otherwise elusive dimension? How can we seize the movements, tensions and forces that move and hold this school?

Indicative bibliography:

• Frédérique Aït-Touati, Alexandra Arènes, Axelle Grégoire, Terra Forma. Manuel de cartographies potentielles. Paris : B42, 2019.
• Catherine D’Ignazio, Lauren Klein, Data Feminism. Cambridge : MIT Press, 2020. [En ligne], https://data-feminism.mitpress.mit.edu/
• Franck Leibovici, Des documents poétiques. Marseille : Al Dante, 2007.
• Philippe Pignarre, Isabelle Stengers, La sorcellerie capitaliste. Pratiques de désenvoûtement. Paris : La Découverte, 2007.
• Nepthys Zwer, Philippe Rekacewicz, Cartographie radicale. Explorations. Paris : La découverte, 2021.
• Blog Visionscarto. [En ligne], https://visionscarto.net/

Bio

Fabrice Sabatier is a Doctor of Art and Art Sciences, graphic designer, researcher and teacher. He graduated in 2008 from the École supérieure d’art et design de Saint-Étienne where he completed the post-graduate Design and Research course the following year. At the same time, he co-founded the graphic design studio .CORP, whose visual communication and digital creation activities are developing in France and Belgium. In 2017, he co-founded the Laboratoire sauvage de recherches expérimentales Désorceler la finance in Brussels, a transdisciplinary collective of artists, researchers and activists who approach the issues of finance through sensitive mediation and witchcraft actions. In 2021, he is defending a thesis in Art and Art Sciences at the ULB and ERG entitled Saisir l’économie par le(s) sens - Une approche critique et sorcière de la visualisation de données économiques par le design [Seeking the economy through the sense(s) - A critical and witchy approach to the visualization of economic data through design]. In this context, he was interested in the politics of diagrams, networks and maps dealing with economics, their ideology and their (potentially witch-like) power. Finally, he teaches, notably at the ESA Saint-Luc Brussels and Tournai, at Télécom Saint-Étienne and at the IMT-BS in Evry.

http://fabricesabatier.com/
http://desorcelerlafinance.org/