English : Editorial

PaaLabRes: Artistic Practices in Acts, Laboratory of Research

Welcome on the first version of the digital space PaaLabRes.

PaaLabRes (Pratiques Artistiques en Actes, Laboratoire de Recherches or Artistic Practices in Acts, Research Laboratory) is a musicians’ collective in existence since 2011, which attempts to define the outlines of artistic research led by the practitioners themselves, concerning artistic expressions that do not result in definitive works. In an initial text[1], the collective was defined in the following manner:

“Electronic technologies created the conditions for the emergence of a great diversity of artistic practices, by allowing considerable access to information about the world and its history. Many practices differentiate themselves both from institutions representing sacred traditions and from commercial cultural industries, in order to invent everyday – very often in a collective manner – their own “art of doing”[2]. We will call these artistic practices “nomadic[3] and transverse”, because they tend to refuse to be fixed in definitive works by continuously reworking matters and techniques according to particular situations, and they tend also to refuse any aesthetic labels (or labels connected to professional identities) by tinkering on an everyday basis along transverse paths.”

PaaLabRes objective is to bring together in action, reflection and research, diverse practices that cannot be closely identified with the definitively fixed patrimonial art forms, nor with the ones imposed by cultural industries. These practices often open ways to collective creation, to improvisation, and to collaborative projects between the arts, including other interactive forms of production.

Questioning the autonomy of art with respect to society, they are grounded in everyday interactions and in contexts that mix art with sociology, philosophy, in transmission activities and education. Because of these features, these practices remain unstable and variable; they are really nomadic and transversal.

The aim of PaaLabRes is to mix different media in order to develop original art/research facilitated by Internet communication technology. The objectives are to bridge the gaps between a) legitimate research articles and more experimental or poetical texts and more simple reflective contributions; b) artistic productions and artistic education, c) artistic concerns and societal or political questions; d) a very large diversity of artistic categories, styles or fields.

Important information about the practical conditions for realizing the 2016 and 2017 editions of the digital space “PaaLabRes”

The digital space is developed by the collective PaaLabRes, with Nicolas Sidoroff as the principal contributor. The editorial team is composed by Samuel Chagnard, Jean-Charles François and Nicolas Sidoroff.

The totality of the production of the digital space “PaaLabRes” – architecture of the site, creation, translations, technical aspects of the realization – is done with a complete absence of financial means and on the basis of volunteer work. The digital space comes into reality thanks to the participation of artists who can do this because they are salaried in some educational institution or retired from this duty, and who give their time within the limits of their possibilities. These same persons additionally have to carry on with their own research and/or artistic projects, often pursuing a doctoral degree. Some actions (i.e. workshops) carried out by the PaaLabRes collective generate a small percentage in order to pay for the site’s hosting services.

But how can web platforms and communities developing Internet tools (of “framasoft” type) continue to fight the system? How is it possible to escape the invasion of publicity, which is the counterpart of Internet being free of charge?

In the first 2016 Edition, for example, we used “youtube” in order to realize the 72 Itineraries-Songs. This was an “easy” solution to the problem of the enormous space taken by these files, but one which imposed (through “Google”) the presence of publicity. For the 2017 Edition, we have decided to use the platform “viméo”, which appeared to us to correspond more to our sense of ethics, but the inconvenience of the presence of publicity (“Staffpicks”) remains. The trick we have designed to counter it consists in giving ample time to users to click on internal links of the site before the appearance of any publicity.

The issue of the lack of means for alternative research projects and for the use of digital communication tools remains to be debated. All remarks and good ideas on this subject would be very welcome. And more generally any critical feedback on our endeavors would be of great use to us.
Your comments (in english) can be sent at this address: contact[chez]paalabres[pt]org

The collective PaaLabRes — 2016 — 2017
Samuel Chagnard, Jean-Charles François, Laurent Grappe,
Karine Hahn, Gilles Laval, Noémi Lefebvre,
Pascal Pariaud, Nicolas Sidoroff, Gérald Venturi.

In the future other maps, plans, drawings and lines will be added as needed.

The PaaLabRes collective hopes that the formula of digital space, which is in the process of being developed will be able to host varied contributions, from original hybrid artistic forms to fundamental reflections on today’s artistic practices. It is very important to us to be able to present a diversity in the domains of artistic production, of cultural expressions, of different ways to present research, and of mixing medias. Our project is to develop a dialog between the detachment of formal research and the lightness of discourses without objects, passing through the polemist’s irony, and the vigor of political debates. What is at stake is the place of artistic practices in the complicated context of our multiple society, in three strongly interactive areas: practices, teaching/learning, research, with their particular systemic approaches.

The collective PaaLabRes — 2016
Samuel Chagnard, Jean-Charles François, Laurent Grappe,
Karine Hahn, Gilles Laval, Noémi Lefebvre,
Pascal Pariaud, Nicolas Sidoroff, Gérald Venturi.

[1] See « 1. Paalabres. Projets de Pratiques Artistiques en Actes, Laboratoire de Recherche », in Revue&Corrigée N°95, March 2013.

[2] See Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall, University of California Press, Berkeley 1984.

[3] See Daniel Charles, Musiques nomades, Paris : Editions Kimé, 1998.