The eight scenography students from the Ninth School met for the fourth time in Nanterre-Amandiers to create the school pavilion that France will present at the Prague Quadrennial in June 2019. A workshop to put things into perspective and go beyond the theme of the island
This is the fourth workshop that brings together the eight students from all over France to work again alongside Philippe Quesne. For these two days, it was time for experimentation and exploration. This workshop was an opportunity to gain height compared to the thread of the island, to dream more widely and question what the "Ninth School" wants to defend in Prague from a political point of view in particular. What does it mean to represent France, to present all the schools and not only personal works? Filigree has developed a more global reflection on the links between theater and ecology.
It was necessary to explore this question mark which has the form of a square. Twenty-five square meters to be exact. Five meters by five materialized on the ground by black bands taped directly on the ground, on a real scale. This empty square is in its raw state the bare space of the pavilion to create, as a cubic necessity, that of appropriating the impersonal and the artificial of a fair of contemporary art.
Led by Philippe Quesne, each one of the student had to enter the space, to walk physically in its spatial nakedness, to live in it, to let it breathe its fictions and hesitations. Then they walked in, felt the space, alone or in groups, standing or lying down.
But it was also necessary to delimit this space, to control it in one way or another. And so they did bare handed, everyone launched himself with his oown style, on an identical support, simple white sheets in A3 format, with pens, markers and paint. A carnival of visions appeared in the studio. Dozens and dozens of A3 sheets to clarify the questions and possibilities. The drawings revealed various worlds. There was an African bar, structures and claustrophobic forms, imaginary apartments for students in scenography, a pavilion-bus that goes around the world, a watchtower, traps, cabinets of curiosity ...
There were also some sculptures and models made with branches, clementine skins, hollow polystyrene ... Being eight people with so different backgrounds, there are a thousand and one ways to project themselves in 25 m2.
All of this is now a genuine catalog of forms. The final pavilion may already be there, as Philippe Quesne said to conclude the workshop.
See you on March 8-9, 2019 to get to the bottom of the pavilion. Without Clothilde this time, she said goodbye to the group and will pass the baton to her classmate Léa Chardin, who also studies at the HEAR.
