PROTOCOLE

Research journal documenting the dialogue between the scientists from the INSA, a writer and myself. This artist publication has integrated the BnF collections in 2017

/ 2015 - 2017

It was in the spring of 2015 that I first set foot in the offices of MATEIS (INSA, National Institute of Applied Sciences). I had met Sophie C. a few days before and her images, made with a scanning electron microscope, opened my desire for partnership, and so I decided to go to Lyon to see more.

During the following eighteen months a multitude of researchers welcomed me, showed me and explained to me their job, my novice questions being directed towards what fascinated me: the notion of fatigue of materials. The observation of a moment as sudden and ephemeral as the fracture immediately fascinated me. I see in these researches a poetic feel invoking resistance, fracture, fault. It is also a phenomena experienced by any human being – the pressure, the notions of resistance, suppleness, fatigue – that are observable on a material like steel, moreover the scientific words used to describe these observations join the Lexical field of human emotion.

In May 2015, I launched an artistic laboratory called PROTOCOLE, which brought together a writer -Olivia Pierrugues-, the INSA researchers and myself with the same idea: showing the fault, the point of relaxation, the resistance that yields.

work in progress
photographs, images produced by INSA researchers with a scanning electron microscope, text written by Olivia Pierrugues
2015-2017