New directions
"What if we gave ourselves new directions by seeking new points of view?
Text by Emmanuel Vergès.
Direction, image, sound by Benoît Labourdette.
Shot at the Domaine of Chamarande, France - 2021.
A movie as a project management method?
A simple artistic film of one minute and a half as a project management method? You’re not serious?
Well, yes, because managing a project is creativity and agility, supported by organization. A good organization based on a lucid analysis is necessary, of course, but far from being sufficient to develop a method that allows you to bring a project to completion without losing its meaning along the way.
Yes, a method can be invented based on an artistic proposal. In fact, many great scientists say they are inspired by artistic invention practices.
Why is it useful to use an artistic work like a film and not just the sentence that gives it meaning? It would be faster just to read the sentence!
No, it would be a bit like considering that a skeleton is a human being. If we dare to make the comparison, the sentence would be the skeleton, which gives structure to the human being, and the film would be the organs, nerves, muscles and skin. The film, the artistic work, is what embodies the idea in reality, in the cultural field, whose purpose is to promote artistic works and practices (cf. missions of the Ministry of Culture).
Insofar as we are in a framework of cultural projects, the film allows us not to lose sight of the objective of this working method: to work on the conception of a method that allows us to embody the meaning of a cultural project..
“A complex environment containing surprising and unpredictable developments calls for complex procedures, and defies analysis based on pre-established rules that do not take into account ever-changing historical conditions”.
Paul Feyerabend, “Against method”, Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 1979.
Working with this film
- Show this film to an audience, several times in a row, large and in the dark (so that you can observe the group of people walking through the picture).
- Suggest to those present to invent together, in a creative process, i.e. “not serious”, ways to look for new points of view. Trust, accept to be destabilized, to have the impression that it is “anything”. If this is the case, it is because there is thinking outside the box that is at work, which is the number one ingredient of innovation.
- You will find that after having “played” with the new points of view, in an organic way (because everyone knows the objective of this meeting), the group will come back on its own to the question of the project management method, which will be inventive and leave room for everyone’s contribution, thus opening up motivation.
It has to be inventive, it will always be different and it is always a risk that one takes, it is never comfortable. But here are quickly two or three avenues to look for new points of view, to help you invite participants to go outside the box. It has to be fun, otherwise it won’t work. Like children, and in a claiming way :
- Get up on the tables to see others in a different way.
- Draw pictures and make each other guess what it represents.
- Associate the different elements of the project with things that seem absurd, like fruit, for example.
- Lie down on the floor and share in words what each person sees.
- In groups of two, take a picture with your phone of a composition that funnily illustrates an aspect of the project and then present the pictures to the others.
- Etc.
Download
- New directions (MPEG4)
My multidisciplinary practices—spanning creation, cultural action, training, and support in a wide range of cultural, social, and educational contexts across France—provide me with a privileged, subjective, and in-depth observatory of the cultural sector in France.
This sector is weakened by its position, often deemed “non-essential” by many political leaders, by the competition from digital platforms in cultural practices, as well as by challenges and obstacles related to the difficulty of establishing interdisciplinary collaborations and the scarcity of evaluations, which are often poorly conducted and instrumentalized.
My observatory allows me to identify dynamics that work, as well as difficulties I observe. Here, I propose to share my analyses, methods, and suggestions, hoping they may prove useful. My goal is to contribute to a stronger cultural sector in the future, as I believe that defending a cultural sector funded by taxpayers’ money holds the potential for emancipation, the development of freedoms, democracy, and the capacity to act—in a way that is fundamentally different from what private actors produce.
This is possible if there is no hypocrisy, and in my view, it comes at the cost of a commitment to lucidity and self-questioning, a choice to deconstruct representations, and perhaps to challenge certain privileges and systems of domination.
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New directions
A film by Emmanuel Vergès and Benoît Labourdette (1’25s, 2021).
"What if we gave ourselves new directions by seeking new points of view?Text by Emmanuel Vergès.Direction, image, sound by Benoît (…) -
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See also
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Framework, purpose and transgression So as not to get lost along the way.
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Arts Center of Enghien-les-bains - Animation movie workshop Cartoon Pocket Films workshops
The Arts Centre Enghien Les Bains / digital Scriptures, an important place of digital creation in France, proposed Saturday, December 2, 2012, the (…)
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