Nomadisme ?

A group of students from three art academies in France, Germany, and Lithuania begin their fourth Migrating Art Academies (MigAA) laboratory under the title “Nomadic Living.” During this laboratory, based on developing art practices while traveling, participants will drive their Media RVs (recreational camping vehicles) more than 9000 kilometers across Europe. Students will visit artists’ studios, galleries, and other cultural resources. They will also participate in workshops in the Gironde region, one of the biggest estuary environment in Europe, and will study with, among other cultural figures, one of the most important contemporary European philosophers, Paul Virilio.

During Nomadic Living students will continue to develop their research around the main MigAA theme: the search for new artistic forms in a migrating, mobile academy, an academy that moves around Europe. This phase of the MigAA collaboration is also a preparatory phase for an upcoming conference and exhibition scheduled for October 2010 at Collegium Hungaricum in Berlin, Germany.

Two student teams will start the Nomadic Living trip with well-equipped Media RVs from Vilnius and Cologne and will join the third team in Angoulême, France. While traveling along the Gironde estuary in southwest France, the students will engage in a range of cultural research activities. They will meet French artists from Fabrique POLA, an artists colony in Bordeaux; they will visit the winery Le Wy, which merges old traditions of wine production and the arts; as well as Talmont-sur-Gironde, site of impressive Franco-Roman architecture.

Along the Gironde estuary, the young artists will observe and study the natural environment both as an ecological reality and as a poetic metaphor of change, transformation, and flow. For this creative research, students will use a wide range of tools — from pencils, pen and ink, to computers and electronic motion, sound, range, and temperature sensors.

In Royan, Nomadic Living will be hosted and assisted by Captures gallery. While there, the students along with French artist Stany Cambot, will explore the city and surroundings via mobile and nomadic points of view. During a four day workshop with Cambot, students will explore nomadic architectures and interact with social spaces that welcome the transitory spirit of nomadism including transport and construction zones and telecommunications networks.

In a very special encounter, the students will further explore the themes of architecture, art, and the city when they meet the eminent philosopher Paul Virilio, best known for his writings on technology in relation to speed and power. Researching evidences of contemporary social systems — the hyperactive rhythm of media, omnipresent urban screens, 24/7 news cycles, and real-time market trading, and so on — will allow them to explore the “dictatorship of the present” that is occurring at the expense of critical analysis, cultural memory, and collective hindsight.