mil-an, nos activités artistiques, with Sainte-Marie hospital, Clermont-Ferrand metro area art school (ESCAM) and the “Wall of China” housing estate in the Saint-Jacques district of Clermont-Ferrand

Nos activités artistiques is an invitation and a starting-point for a collective exploration. The idea is to identify, activate and share artistic activities in everyday life.

Veduta, supported by insurer MGEN across all its actions in 2021, spent a season in Sainte-Marie hospital in Clermont-Ferrand. Capitalising on the presence of the Clermont-Ferrand metro area art school (ESCAM) and on its experiences over many years with groups of residents in the “Wall of China” housing estate in the Saint-Jacques district and with La Balise, the school’s arts education hub, the project was built transversally. It thus combined Veduta’s expertise in establishing co-constructed arts projects with the student-artists’ expertise in creating art with the residents and hospital staff that relates to how the psychiatric patients are cared for.

The collective experience of nos activités artistiques will be led by the artist mil-an, whose work’s subject is often the group – its dynamics, flaws and potential. Acting as “playmaker” in this polyphonic context, he assists these actor-audiences in creating artistic actions that question the places of bodies in these hospital and education organisations or those imposed by social urbanism and the relationship systems that derive from these organisations, in a model close to Foucault’s definition of disciplinary institutions.

The idea is to experiment with art’s possibilities inside these institutions – which are now seeking openness, destigmatisation and participation – and thus explore the forms and features of society’s new landscapes. All of these collective journeys will be presented in 2022 as part of a cluster of events at the Lyon Contemporary Art Biennale, as well as offering shared moments in Clermont-Ferrand at the project’s various geographical hubs.

To know more about the artist : mil-an.com

Project conducted as part of MGEN’s sponsorship of Veduta 2021.

Photo: mil-an, drawing of the performance Faites-nous courir on 6 February 2019 at the meeting of recalcitrant yellow-vest protesters in Saint-Junien, April 2021, Licence CC BY-SA 4.0