weS.A.N.K. (Speculative Architectures of Neganthroposcenic Kronotopias)

Vincent Roumagnac + Emmanuelle Chiappone-Piriou + Guests

weSANK project

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. On the occasion of 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 big data and post-industrial landscapes, dystopian narratives and daily rituals, climate, memory, energy and affect - the spontaneous design and manufacture of prototypes seek to explore techno-sensitive and geographical conditions and, within them, the seizing and coalescing physical and informational objects, within a performative 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.

 

Go to:

weSANK Venice (Prologue)

weSANK Tokyo

weSANK Paris

weSANK Helsinki

weSANK Barcelona

weSANK Daegu

weSANK Deep Stage As