Description
Jérôme Abel proposed to the students of the CFA Agricole in Valdoie and the EREA Simone Veil in Besançon to dissect the smartphone by looking at the plurality of functionalities that this tool has (communication, geolocation, photo, video…). The idea was to create a series of interactive works which all have in common the use of fake plaster telephones, sometimes made conductive and interactive by sensors grafted to the phones or by their placement in space.
Jérôme and the students of both schools were interested in the ecological and social issues of cell phones. Initially, Jérôme proposed a series of drawings presenting several avenues for involving teachers and students in the choice of projects. With Covid shuffling and postponing the residencies, Jérôme ended up choosing these three art projects:
– Clicocracy: inspired by click farms (rooms filled with cell phones where people are paid to click), clicocracy questions the gesture of clicking when it fulfills an evaluation function.
– Geographical ghosts: this installation is an attempt to visualize the invisible links that operate around the cell phone, the material that makes it up, the communication links between humans and machines.
– Crash message system: performance realized to speak about the telephone as a tool of communication, always to return the transport of visible messages… in the form of a tyrolean of plaster telephones crashing in the reception!
Action
These workshops were conducted within the framework of the “Artistes plasticiens au lycée” program proposed by the Burgundy-Franche-Comté Region. Through this program – and with the partnership of the DRAC and the DRAAF – the Regional Council of Franche-Comté aims to arouse the curiosity and encourage the initiatives of high school students by meeting artists and discovering places of creation and artistic dissemination.
Three approaches are approached during the residency: the encounter with a work through the discovery of a creative process, the artistic and cultural practice and the construction of an aesthetic judgment. Having begun with a visit to Bien Urbain, the objective is to bring the students to discover the field of urban arts, as much through sensitivity as through practice.
Biography
Jérôme Abel is a visual and multimedia artist. In his installations and performances, he stages interactive situations, hybrid and kinetic sculptures that question our relationship to artifacts, to the living and to the phenomena of acquisition and sharing of knowledge.
Photos credits
Chloé Cura