All publications

Here you’ll find all the publications on this website, sorted by date, starting with the most recent.

<
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
…
43
>

The Evolution of the Love Contract

The Evolution of the Love Contract

An ethnological approach to a rapidly changing object.
From the 1804 Civil Code to dating apps, what we call loving in France has been constructed as a historically situated contractual regime. Analysing it through its (…)

Unconditional love between adults

Unconditional love between adults

On a therapeutic dogma and what it obscures.
It is regularly claimed, in therapy training, that unconditional love only exists toward children. This claim seems to me mistaken and harmful, because it conflates (…)

Vocal presence

Vocal presence

A typology of voices at a distance and the kinds of presence they shape.
Making a phone call, leaving a voice message, joining a video call, listening to a podcast, watching a live stream, talking with a voice AI: six ways of being present (…)

Giving without expecting return

Giving without expecting return

On asymmetric giving, from human bonds to digital commons.
Anthropology has taught us to be wary of the gift, which it always describes as caught up in an obligation of return. There is, however, another form of giving, one (…)

The body-knowledge of fear

The body-knowledge of fear

On what bodies know about danger that concepts cannot convey.
A woman walking home on foot in the evening holds a bodily knowledge of danger that the man walking down the same street does not share. I propose the concept of (…)

When the real does not exist, one cannot speak of it

When the real does not exist, one cannot speak of it

On speech as the manifestation of the real, and silence as the body’s lucidity.
We often reproach certain people for not knowing how to speak about what they live in their relationships. I want to argue that their silence is not always a (…)

What is Philosophy Today?

What is Philosophy Today?

Crafting concepts from presence and lived life.
Every person carries a philosophy without knowing it, inherited from their culture. I try here to say what it is, for me, to do philosophy today, forging concepts (…)

Notes for a philosophy at the age of artificial intelligences

Notes for a philosophy at the age of artificial intelligences

A toolbox for thinking about what is happening to us.
The concepts available to philosophy were forged in an era when humans were alone in producing articulated meaning, in reasoning through propositions, in fabricating (…)

Displaced Resonance

Displaced Resonance

Extending resonance to the age of artificial intelligence.
Hartmut Rosa describes our living relationship to the world along three axes of resonance: the relationship to others, the relationship to work and things, the (…)

Presence within Entanglement

Presence within Entanglement

Presence when a third party holds the trace.
Artificial intelligences write in our place and retain what we no longer retain. The transformation is now ordinary, present even in the everyday uses of the (…)

Delegated Thinking

Delegated Thinking

Why intellectuals suspend their critical thinking on certain topics.
An intellectual person close to me asserts to me one day, as an established fact, what she has read on the cover of Le Monde: that the newly elected far-right mayors (…)

Born in the Machine

Born in the Machine

Toward an Anthropology of the Interface.
Five weeks spent in an incubator at birth, in a sterile environment where the only contacts came from the caregivers through the sleeves of the apparatus and the (…)

The bond that sets us free

The bond that sets us free

Toward an ethics of the bond in mediation and support work.
To emancipate those whom we accompany, and to emancipate ourselves in the same gesture: this, in my view, lies at the heart of any practice of mediation, care or (…)

Short bio & filmo

Short bio & filmo

Benoît Labourdette
Benoît Labourdette is a filmmaker, educator, researcher, essayist and consultant in cultural innovation and digital strategies. He is also a multidisciplinary artist (…)

Conscious compromise with artificial intelligence

Conscious compromise with artificial intelligence

How to critique a technology one depends on.
To critique artificial intelligence today, in most intellectual situations, requires using it at least occasionally. This contradiction is not a moral scandal. It (…)

How digital technology reshapes our relationship to the performing arts

How digital technology reshapes our relationship to the performing arts

A synthesis of my contribution to the round table at Chaillot Augmenté × TMNlab on 6 May 2026.
On Wednesday 6 May 2026, I was invited to speak at the round table “Audiences: how is digital technology reshaping our relationship to the performing arts?”, as part (…)

Chaillot Augmenté x TMNlab 2026: two days on the performing arts and digital technology

Chaillot Augmenté x TMNlab 2026: two days on the performing arts and digital technology

A presentation and critical reading of the gathering held at Chaillot on 5 and 6 May 2026, in which I am taking part.
On 5 and 6 May 2026, Chaillot, Théâtre National de la Danse, hosts the second edition of the « Chaillot Augmenté x TMNlab Meetings: Performing arts and digital (…)

Creating to think

Creating to think

A French-Finnish meeting at L’Alhambra in Marseille on 4 May 2026, as part of the Erasmus+ Visual Thinkers project.
On 4 May 2026, I facilitated a professional meeting at L’Alhambra in Marseille, organised by the Image Clé association as part of the European Erasmus+ Visual (…)

Extended integrity

Extended integrity

Thinking our cyborg condition in the age of artificial intelligence.
We are cyborgs: this is an anthropological observation, not a metaphor. Our integrity as persons is no longer contained within the limits of the biological body; it (…)

“I Am Not an Activist, I Am Engaged”

“I Am Not an Activist, I Am Engaged”

Denis Robert and the Trap of Rationality.
On 14 April 2026, Denis Robert, founder of the independent media outlet Blast, was heard, alongside Ivan du Roy (Basta!) and Johan Weisz (StreetPress), by the French (…)

The Ambient Sound Chorus

The Ambient Sound Chorus

Having non-actors play the ambient sound of a scene live during the shoot, using simple musical instruments.
During a filmmaking workshop, when the shoot begins, how can we make sure everyone genuinely contributes, including those who are not acting or running the camera? (…)

Letting Go of One's Criteria

Letting Go of One’s Criteria

What the practitioner must agree to lose for mediation to work.
In the cultural and therapeutic mediation workshops I lead, the challenge is to create the conditions for people, often unsure of their own legitimacy to create, to (…)

Receiving, or the difficulty of doing nothing

Receiving, or the difficulty of doing nothing

The mediator’s invisible time and the energy of welcoming.
By the end of the day I am tired, with a physical tiredness, even though “I have done nothing,” because I have spent the day placing myself in a state of receiving. I (…)

Anthropology of the Electricity Pylon

Anthropology of the Electricity Pylon

On the technical mythology of a country that never debates its infrastructures.
In December 1999, the storms Lothar and Martin brought down more than a thousand high-voltage pylons in France and cut off electricity to 3.7 million households, (…)

Work and Mastery (2)

Work and Mastery (2)

Distinguishing work from mastery in mediation-based creation.
Work (as a process by which people are transformed through doing) and mastery (as the illusion of control over what one produces) are two distinct logics. (…)

The process, not the result

The process, not the result

What needs to be told for mediation to be understood.
An artist is brought in, and results are expected to match the professional who has been paid. This expectation threatens every mediation practice, cultural, (…)

The framework that authorizes

The framework that authorizes

For a reflection on space, time, and institution in therapeutic mediation.
When we speak of a frame, we often think of what contains and what forbids. This understanding is partial. In the analytic cure as in mediation work, the frame is not (…)

What the gaze of others does to our images

What the gaze of others does to our images

Reflections on symbolization, identity, and the unconscious in photography-based mediation.
When I invite a group of people to each take a photograph and then look at them together, with the rule that the author cannot speak while the others say what they (…)

The Image as Evidence

The Image as Evidence

What Machines Do to Us.
When an image is born of a machine, it attests. This property, which distinguishes photography from drawing and cinema from theatre, gives image-based mediation a (…)

Defending authors with words that aren't their own

Defending authors with words that aren’t their own

The paradox of the hoist by his own petard.
The SACD circulated on 22 April 2026 an op-ed to be signed (via Google Forms) calling on Members of Parliament to support the presumption of use of works by AI (…)

Rebuilding the Democratic Function of Major Performing Arts Venues

Rebuilding the Democratic Function of Major Performing Arts Venues

At a time when anyone can be a creator, what could theatres, national stages and drama centres become for the people who live around them?
Digital technology has made each of us a potential creator. This anthropological transformation calls for a rethinking of the political function of publicly funded (…)

The Book Archipelago

The Book Archipelago

A proposal to elected representatives: making plural bookshops the backbone of territorial cultural policies.
Faced with the tensions running through the bookshop sector today, it is time to put an end to the sanctuary myth. Rather than seeking an unattainable neutrality, let (…)

Ensourced Speech

Ensourced Speech

A Daily Practice of Artificial Intelligence, in Response to Yann LeCun’s Diagnosis
Yann LeCun argues that large language models reason within an abstraction of language, foreign to what we usually call the world. Their speech nonetheless enters our (…)

Attestational Dramaturgy

Attestational Dramaturgy

A concept for understanding the journalistic staging of reality, in dialogue with Bourdieu, Debord, Baudrillard, Chomsky, Colon, Deleuze, Watkins and Virilio.
Journalism traditionally presents itself as privileged access to reality. Its everyday practice, however, very often consists of summoning the real as an illustration (…)

Building, Not Valorizing

Building, Not Valorizing

What the collective gaze does that valorization cannot.
In supported creation workshops, whether they fall within cultural action, arts education, or therapeutic mediation, people often speak of “valorizing” the (…)

The photography workshop: creating, showing, looking together

The photography workshop: creating, showing, looking together

Reflections on a hands-on workshop facilitated by Benoît Labourdette at the professional conference “Cinema, images and young people’s mental health”, held on 14 April 2026 in Romainville, France.
A workshop in nine small groups, fifteen minutes to produce a photograph, then a moment of collective viewing in which the authors remain silent and the others speak (…)

« Mental Health and Cinema »

« Mental Health and Cinema »

Synthesis of the day “Young people, their images, their spaces: new paradigms” (14 April 2026)
Synthesis of a day of professional gatherings at the Le Trianon cinema in Romainville, bringing together the perspectives of professionals from the cultural sector, (…)

Mental health, young people, images: what are we talking about?

Mental health, young people, images: what are we talking about?

Text of Benoît Labourdette’s opening talk at the professional meetings held on 14 April 2026.
Before entering into projects, we need to pin down the words. Mental health, young people, images: three notions we often use together without defining them, and (…)

Place as an Operative Concept for an Emancipatory Cultural Mediation

Place as an Operative Concept for an Emancipatory Cultural Mediation

Taking one’s place is not about occupying a position, it’s about being able to move.
“What place for young people?” The question is wrongly framed. Place is not a position to occupy, it is the capacity to move within a relational and symbolic space. I (…)

Audio recording “The Secrets”

The Shared Secret

When the intimate becomes collective: a method of collective intelligence through whispering, listening and creation.
Creating a space where the intimacy of a whisper becomes a collective work. Engaging empathic listening, emotional regulation and creative thinking in a shared (…)

Transmitting cultural rights: a question of coherence

Transmitting cultural rights: a question of coherence

What facilitation methods reveal about our relationship with people.
How can we talk about cultural democracy within an authoritarian framework? How can we defend respect for each person’s culture while imposing a tightly scheduled (…)

The political dimension of organisational frameworks

The political dimension of organisational frameworks

When forms contradict intentions: organising cultural democracy.
We talk about cultural democracy, horizontality, cultural rights. But the concrete frameworks we put in place often tell a very different story. This inconsistency, (…)

Mental Health and Cinema - Experiencing the World Through Images

Mental Health and Cinema - Experiencing the World Through Images

Two professional conferences in Romainville (April 14 and 15, 2026).
On April 14 and 15, 2026, ACRIF, as part of its coordination mission for Passeurs d’images in Île-de-France, is organizing two days of professional meetings at Le (…)

The returned gaze

The returned gaze

When technology turns back upon itself, it is us it auscultates.
An artificial intelligence model capable of detecting flaws in computer code accomplishes a philosophically unprecedented gesture: technology examining its own (…)

Imposed lucidity

Imposed lucidity

When computational power forces us to see what we preferred to ignore.
The growing capabilities of artificial intelligence models and quantum computers are making the fragilities of our technical constructions transparent. Faced with (…)

Pedagogy of Artificial Intelligence

Pedagogy of Artificial Intelligence

Creating rather than explaining.
The educational tool “Dans le regard de l’IA” (“Through the Eyes of AI”) by Média Animation sets out to question the biases of generative artificial intelligences. (…)

The Selfie, the Filter, and the Two Bodies

The Selfie, the Filter, and the Two Bodies

The image of self as therapeutic working material.
A young woman retouches her ID photo using artificial intelligence. The educator accompanying her tells her: “That’s not you. You’re already very beautiful, but (…)

The object that disposes

The object that disposes

What machines change in mediation.
When we choose a tool for mediation, we choose a device of relationships. The technical object carries within it a history, a politics, ways of arranging bodies and (…)

Trust as a Technical Act

Trust as a Technical Act

How Inner Work and the Choice of Objects Build the Conditions for Emancipation.
The trust that a mediator gives to participants is something that gets built. It requires inner work on one’s own fears and a patient choice of objects. The serenity (…)

Not judging people's digital practices

Not judging people’s digital practices

Non-judgment and non-hierarchization as conditions for mediation.
Judgment damages the very connection that mediation seeks to build. It goes hand in hand with a more subtle hierarchization, which places the practitioner above those (…)

<
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
…
43
>