Centre Pompidou, June 23 - July 2, 2016
Deadline: Mar 20, 2016

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

Bricolage and counterculture at the age of technical reproduction 1950
– 1970. Primary Sources at Work

The Bibliothèque Kandinsky’s Summer University is a Musée National
d’Art Moderne/Centre Pompidou research program installed on the very
premises of the museum. It focuses on modern and contemporary art
primary sources: archives, documentary materials (both written and
visual), interviews, records as well as new forms of artistic
appropriation and documentary production. Interdisciplinary in format,
the Summer University brings together young researchers: historians,
art historians, anthropologists, sociologists, artists, critics and
curators which share a collective reflection with art professionals and
various scholars around source materials. It will be held in the
museum’s space all around a conference table acting at the same time as
an exhibition device displaying documents. The space will be invested
with facsimiles, reproductions and archival material presented during
the working sessions. Several writing and translation workshops as well
as reading sessions will rhythm the 10-days program. The editorial
production of this material will be assembled under the format of a
journal - "Journal de l'Université d'été de la Bibliothèque Kandinsky"-
both as a critical anthology registering the debates during the
sessions and as a graphic experimental production.

In all their heterogeneity, the political, theoretical and aesthetical
scopes embedded in the counter-culture phenomena place themselves under
the urgency of reinventing new modes of creation, behaviour and life.

In extension to the Beat Generation exhibition hosted by the Centre
Pompidou starting with June 2016, the Bibliothèque Kandinsky Summer
University reactivates the discussion around the multiplicity of
countercultural expressions and around the intellectual hubs that have
generated them. Beatniks, Angry Young Men, Situationnist and Provos,
alternative practices and underground scenes, the Summer University
will be the place to investigate under new light a generation placed
under the sign of dissent.

Recent explorations in cultural studies and new perspectives shed by
interpretations applied to the "global sixties" and "hippie modernisms"
convey the historiographical complexity of the subject. Denoting a
polyphonic character, without the comfort of made-up taxonomies, the
counter-cultural phenomenon raises new forms of analysis, anchored in
micro-histories, in contextual biographical writing and languages and
material culture of the everyday. What kind of documentary practices
and methods can be applied then to a shifting object, constantly
escaping conventional regimes of historicity? What kind of narrative
and experiential rendering can be imagined for the counter-cultural
"stories"?

Material culture and the understanding of its technical modes of
existence can offer a viable pathway. We will be addressing the
different ways imagination and technical inventiveness fashion artistic
practice, going from self-management situations in the era of
bricolage, assemblage and do-it-yourself to creative communities and
collective consciousness. We will also interrogate one of the
counter-cultural persistent ambivalences towards technology, caught up
in-between the opposition against the technocratic power and the future
of a society of information, between mystical attraction and cybernetic
prospective.

The Bibliothèque Kandinsky Summer University 2016 edition will give the
opportunity to put sources "at work" and to bring together young
researchers, curators and artists around documentary material – for
some part largely unseen. It invites researchers from all horizons to
bring up their source material and to put it into debate, through
historical creative and inventive writing.

Primary sources at work but all power to the imagination!
The thematic topics that we open to participation focus around:
- alternative modes of life, community ideals, collective work,
transnational networks of the counter-culture, alternative production
and distribution practices, exceptional biographies;
- experimental technologies and modes of creation (visual, sound,
text), “bad genres”, intermedia, analogue techniques, cut-ups;
- political actions and events, student movements, territories of
dissent, borders of the marginal, underground economies, derivative
products;
- imaginary geographies, urban derives, ecstatic wanderings, places of
journey and cartographies of escape. A prolongation of these expanded
geographies will take place via visits and urban excursions on the
Parisian scene.

"Pour exorciser l’esprit de la catastrophe" (in Jean-Jacques Lebel’s
words), the 10-days debates and collective work will be gathered and
documented by the third issue of the "Journal de l’Université d’été de
la Bibliothèque Kandinsky". Experimental visual production and
documentary extension in its own, reactivating the practice of the
fanzine, the Journal will bring together graphic designers and the
participants of the Summer University themselves and will be conceived
during collective writing sessions.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE

The Bibliothèque Kandinsky’s Summer University is intended for young
historians, art historians, anthropologists, sociologists, curators,
graphic designers and artists at large.

Post-graduate students (PhD candidates, PhDs, post-doctoral
researchers), artists and curators who wish to take part in the Summer
University are invited to submit a proposal, as well as a CV, which
should clearly assess the candidate’s language proficiency. In order to
apply is important to have a good command in both English and French.

The proposal, which should be composed of circa 4,500 characters/700
words, may be written either in English or in French. It should be
submitted in the form of a PDF document and should include the
applicant's name, postal and electronic addresses, as well as the
country the candidate belongs to, and the institution the candidate is
affiliated with.

Candidates are expected to bring along a selection of sources used in
their research.

The proposal dossier will be sent to:
bibliotheque.kandinsky@centrepompidou.fr by March, the 20th.

The proposals will be evaluated by a scientific committee, in charge of
drawing up the final Summer University program. The Committee will
retain 25 projects.
All applicants, whether selected or not, will be personally contacted
before March, 27th 2016.

A participation of € 100 will be required from each participant, who
will be provided with tuition. The participation will cover
transportation on site and eventual institutional entries.
Accommodation can be offered under special conditions yet to be
determined.

If requested, the Centre Pompidou will be able to issue any required
certificate in order to apply for scholarship or funding from
foundations, museums, universities or research institutes.

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Didier Schulmann, chief curator, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, MNAM/Centre
Pompidou
Philippe-Alain Michaud, chief curator, MNAM/Centre Pompidou
Mica Gherghescu, art historian, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, MNAM/Centre
Pompidou
Enrico Camporesi, conservation attaché, MNAM/Centre Pompidou

For any inquiry, please write to :
bibliotheque.kandinsky@centrepompidou.fr
or contact us at:
Tel : +33 (0)1 44 78 46 65