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Laboratory of Change

A pilot program of research/training/production, creating methods and interactive processes for acting concretely in the context of the changes and complexity that characterize our times.

A constant activity of research on the complex issues of change has led to PRODUCTIONS on the social and cultural fields, around two principal, complementary focus of activities : Génération Chaos and Les Périphériques Vous Parlent.

* Génération Chaos *

Performing group that creates staged expressions from the researches of the Laboratory. Under the direction of Marc'O for theater and Jean-Charles François for music, Génération Chaos' young members have created the theatrical and musical plays GÉNÉRATION CHAOS 1 and GÉNÉRATION CHAOS 2, part of a trilogy on youth.

* Les Périphériques Vous Parlent *

Glossy periodical magazine, complementary and in constant interaction with Génération Chaos, shifting the discourse from action to ideas, ideas to action.

OTHER UNITS OF PRODUCTION WITHIN THE LABORATORY

* The Chorus *

Works directly with Génération Chaos. Allows for a constant exchange between the stage and its audience.

* Workshops *

Initiation to change, the workshops are based on The Laboratory's methods : practical and theoretical processes using theatrality in the realm of interpersonal interaction

* Discussion Group *

The Laboratory's think-tank.

* WWW Unit *

Studies and questions the uses of new technologies in relation to the living.

* Université d'Urgence *

European-wide network of university professors and students, started by philosopher Isabelle Stengers after a performance of GÉNÉRATION CHAOS 2 at Brussels' Université Libre. Its goal : to conceive of the university as a place of production of knowledge, free and open to all. To engage professors and students in a relationship of a new type. Joined by units at Paris School of Beaux Arts, St. Denis Paris VIII University, Brussel's Université Libre, Leipzig/Germany University, etc.

* Philosophes Debout *

An off-shoot of the Université d'Urgence this group is comprised of members of Génération Chaos and Les Périphériques Vous Parlent. They elaborate ways and purposes to the practicing of philosophy, using theater and music based skits as one such tool.

* L'Impossible, Et Pourtant *

Book serie, in essay form published by the Laboratory. Contains contributions by its collaborators. Witness to the evolution of the Laboratory's researches over the years.

* Unit on Agricultural Quality *

Creates exchanges between the urban and the rural worlds. Studies the issue of quality in the agricultural world. Works in collaboration with Les Périphériques Vous Parlent and Chartres High School of Agriculture.

* Visual Arts and Photography *

Questions the role of the visual arts, their mode of presentation and production.

* Unit on Exclusion *

Organized the Enfants des Rues/Children of the Street 1993 Tour in Europe of Brazilian kids. Works to fight the exclusion and massacre of kids in some South American countries.
 

Trajectory and Goals

The Laboratory was born from the context of the long-lasting social and cultural crisis rocking our industrialized societies, forcing us to go beyond the cultural criteria imposed by over a century of Taylorist domination. At the core of its cultural and artistic practices is the concept of the difference of behavior between the Interpretor and the Actor.

The Laboratory aims at the development of personnality and at a mode of behavior characteristic of the Actor, through methods (a language of change : conceptual and practical tools) elaborated by the Laboratory's founders.

How to elaborate a praxis leading to a new sort of training of the individual ? How to sensibilize and mobilize very different audiences to act on the problems linked to the changes that affect our time ? How to change ways of perceiving and ways of doing ? How to become an Actor/Author of one's actions and learn to evolve within a world characterized, on a day to day basis, by instability and complexity ?

These questions, as much as their eventual answers, aim at becoming catalysts for change, as well as factors of social cohesion. These are the goals of the Laboratory. These are the stakes for our times.

Specificities of the Laboratory

• Co-existence in the same space and time of the activities of research, training and production, and that, for each and every project.
  • The outside public can be integrated into activities and come out of its passivity.
• Interdisciplinarity and transversality between disciplines.
  • Continuity between various forms of artistic expressions, each with its own specific public outcome.
  • Continuity between the artistic, the social and the political allowing for differentiated public actions.
  • Continuity between production, theory-making and distribution.
• Existence of several levels of participation, transitions between the internal productions and the outside world.
  • Daily, the Chorus, external eye, observes, participates, comments the productions/researches.
  • Every week, the Work in Progress is presented to a second circle of friends and friends of friends, in Paris.
  • Thirdly, the publication of magazine Les Périphériques Vous Parlent, widely distributed in France with the goal to catalyze actions in various transversal settings (universities and schools, political, social and artistic realms, community centers, ...).
  • A fourth circle is created through the connections of the group with other groups and networks throughout Europe sharing similar activities or goals.
  • Finally, the multiplicity of public presentations with varied goals (concerts, demonstrations, performance spaces, cultural centers, conferences, institutions of higher learning, high schools, etc...) further widens the realm of action.
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Les périphériques vous parlent, last updated on april 14, 03 by TMTM
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