#5 weS.A.N.K. (Speculative Architectures for Neganthroposcenic Kronotopias)
Project co-convened with the architect, curator and researcher Emmanuelle Chiappone-Piriou
weS.A.N.K. Venice[Prologue/Considerings] : 12.5.2017 - Research Pavilion Venice, in the context of the 57th Venice Biennale
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 - PSi#24 Conference / Daegu Art Factory
weS.A.N.K. Deep Stage As : 14 - 18.11.2018 - Baltic Circle Festival / Vapaan Taiteen Tila / Helsinki
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 theatre and architecture, as part of his doctorate on scenic thinking and time ecology. The purpose of the two-year collaborative research process is to design and display architectural prototypes of the "stage of the future". This project is 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 mutations. 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, ecodramaturgy, 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 a performative prologue in May 2017 in the context of the 57th Venice Biennale (Research Pavilion) and five collaborative sessions: during autumn 2017 in Japan, then in 2018 in France, Finland, Catalonia-Spain and South Korea. On the occasion of the collaborative sessions Roumagnac and Chiappone-Piriou, together with local artists and architects, begin the design and production, and the critical discussion, of what they call “prototypes of the stage of the future”. The main interest and goal of the hosts are to orientate the research project into an emergence of alternative common imaginaries. Making alliances and exchanging with other artists and architects in different European and Asian cities, they set up an ephemeral, fragile and joyous factory for assembling prototypes that would (re)compose the bio- and techno- invisible ecologies “we” are already part of. Finally, in November 2018, all the 161 prototypes created during the five sessions are gathered and re-assembled under the title weS.A.N.K. Deep Stage As for a public show in an anti-atomic bomb shelter in Helsinki. On this occasion, weS.A.N.K. hosts and guests invite the spectators to enter a quantity of scenic/scenographic "potentials", proposing to poetically and ethically sense diverse ways of inhabiting the world through resetting the notion and, therefore, the experience of the stage.
weS.A.N.K. 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.