Par son ampleur planétaire inédite, le contexte actuel de transitions multiples (monde VUCA, Deep Transition) est une invitation, si ce n’est une obligation, de repenser notre manière d’habiter la planète, de voir le monde et de nous projeter vers l’avenir. Comment refaire monde lorsque tous nos cadres anthropologiques et épistémologiques sont remis en question ?

A l’occasion de cette communication nous partagerons des éléments de recherche issus du TAC Future Lab (TAC pour Toward Alien Cosmologies – journal de recherche bientôt disponible sur tacfuturelab.org) menés depuis 2018. Son objectif est d’explorer comment concevoir de nouveaux mondes futurs dans une démarche d’innovation méthodologique transdisciplinaire mêlant prospective, art conceptuel, design, philosophie et pédagogie inclusive, parmi d’autres disciplines mobilisées dans les travaux du lab.  Afin de s’émanciper des cadres épistémologiques conventionnels tout en respectant leur héritage et la possibilité de les relier, la création de nouveaux vocabulaires, architectures cognitives et ingénieries d’idées en est un point essentiel.

La démarche du lab inclue le design de diagrammes artistiques et méthodologiques, permettant d’ouvrir des espaces de recherche prospective radicalement transdisciplinaires et multidimensionnels (que nous appelons recherche polygonale), de croiser les savoirs et les points de vue, et d’explorer de nouvelles formes de monde. Ces dispositifs heuristiques, qui peuvent être spatialisés et mis en scène à l’occasion d’ateliers ou d’expositions, laisse leur place à l’imagination et à l’inconnu (ce que nous appelons le facteur alien), point sur lequel l’apport de l’art s’avère décisif et contribue à l’effort d’innovation pédagogique et d’empowerment du lab.

RBW

La conférence limit/no limit, qui aura lieu du 24 au 26 janvier 2024 dans le cadre de Art Design Recherche Conference [AD•REC], invite les esprits créatifs, les chercheurs et les passionnés d’art et de design à se rassembler pour mener une réflexion sur la question de la limite dans le contexte de la recherche artistique et de la conception en France. Le comité scientifique a sélectionné 40 propositions sur plus de 150 qui reflètent une approche critique et réflexive, ainsi que des contributions qui présentent des exemples concrets de collaborations interdisciplinaires et résilientes.

Dans un monde façonné par la modernisation des sociétés et la diffusion rapide d’un modèle productiviste capitaliste mondialisé, cette conférence se veut une plateforme de réflexion critique et créative sur les défis sociétaux actuels. limit/no limit propose d’explorer différentes dimensions historiques et géographiques de la notion de limite, soulevant des questions cruciales.

Axes de recherche  de la conférence :

1. RESSOURCES / La recherche en art et en design pour de nouvelles articulations entre communautés humaines et ressources naturelles.

2. SYSTÈMES / De quelle manière l’art et le design contribuent-ils à construire de nouveaux modèles de société ?

3. ÉPISTÉMOLOGIE / Comment l’art et le design contribuent-ils à la fabrication de nouveaux modes de savoirs ?

Site et programme de la conférence : limitnolimit.fr

Compte-rendu de toutes les inteventions sur le padlet de la conférence.

Raphaele Bidault-Waddington, is the founder of LIID Future Lab, a foresight research platform designing future labs in artistic, academic, urban and corporate contexts.

From 2012 to 2017, its multi-awarded lab on the future Greater Paris metropolis (with Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne University) prototyped a series of mixed future research and transdisciplinary pedagogic innovations. Its latest R&D lab “Toward Alien Cosmologies” addresses post-human futures and continues innovating at the frontier of future research, art and co-learning.

What does the format of the lab/laboratory mean to you?

Historically laboratories were specific spaces where to access certain tools, make experiences or design and test experimental protocols in order to extract learnings, to innovate or to produce (scientific and non-scientific) knowledge. The concept of laboratory is in fact rather fluid. In a more recent time, other types of laboratories without specific tools and places, such as learning lab, urban labs, living lab, future lab, art lab, and so on, have emerged. Philosopher Bruno Latour has even introduced the idea that the real world should be the laboratory to learn directly from.

As an alternative definition, in the last twenty years, I have been using the notion of laboratory as a conceptual frame to design, organize and unfold a research process, geared toward a certain critical challenge or topic, and combining experiences or experiments, and learnings (knowledge production and sharing). These learnings can be considered scientific if the lab respect academic rules and protocols, and positions them in relation to a discipline’s state of the art. But they can also be hybrid, peri-scientific or non-scientific when other methods, experiments and knowledge formats are used.

The labs I create as an artist-researcher and future lab designer, always have a speculative dimension, and mix artistic, future, urban and transdisciplinary academic research methods, experiences and formats.  Then a laboratory can be very short or very long (from one day to several years), evolve through time (different than a project or a production with a clear expected output), more or less open and collaborative, and involve a small or large number of participants.

What’s your favorite project that explores the future with a lab perspective?

My most thrilling project at the moment is the future lab “Toward Alien Cosmologies” that I started in 2017 to explore Artificial Intelligence future implications, and then expanded to the Anthropocene and post-Truth paradigms, which raise similar holistic future challenges. This lab is my most advanced future research where I’m trying to design new ways of exploring possible future worlds (cosmologies) when everything and at all scales, is radically uncertain.

The Anthropocene requires that we reinvent the way we live on Earth; AI (and technologies) challenges human capacities, certitudes, and politics and raise deep ontological issues; and the post-Truth shakes our relation and trust in any form of truth, as if everything has become somehow alien. This paradigm calls for a profound anthropological and transdisciplinary epistemological reset, which cannot be address with conventional rationality and that’s why and where Art is important. This lab is certainly not reasonable, in all the senses that term can take.

It also echoes post-humanist questions and philosophies as I develop in my article “Designing post-human futures” in Knowledge For the Anthropocene (E. Elgar Press, 2021).
A dedicated website, recollecting all the lab’s research episodes (workshops, exhibitions conferences and publications in France, US, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, etc.) since 2017 is due later this year.

Suite de l’interview sur le site du E-Learning Lab de ZHdK

The conference will explore the questions of which scientific and historical foundations today’s labs are based on. Which exploratory learning and teaching forms, which interdisciplinary methods are lab-specific and what potential does the digital laboratory have for inspired, critical thinking?

Will the learning of the future take place in labs? Can experimental, explorative learning with experts and peers facilitate innovative forms of teaching and learning?
What role does digitality play, and what artistic and design-oriented approaches are we developing in labs? And how can we integrate these methods as small interventions in teaching practice or use them as an entire teaching unit? We will explore these questions analytically and playfully at the LaborDigital conference.

Programme de la conférence : https://paul.zhdk.ch/course/view.php?id=2312#section-2

Compte-rendu de la conférence : https://elearning.zhdk.ch/experience/labordigital-experimental-learnings-an-der-zhdk-1

During this 90mn masterclass, Raphaële Bidault-Waddington, artist, researcher and founder of LIID Future Lab, will share a great diversity of artistic and future oriented experiments, showing how they become powerful learning experience (LX). Q&A will be taken for each presented case.
A broad scope of learning formats, contexts (school, academic research, work and culture) and profiles will be covered, from senior and highly educated executives, to Masters students or youth in difficulty, showing how, in all cases, a « creative lab » culture fosters learning desire, openness and empowerment. By definition, a « creative lab » thoroughly combines creativity, knowledge and experiment …
As a relaxed and discovery-oriented Friday afternoon, the discussion with participants will allow to collectively look for additional insights on creative pedagogy, futures literacy and LX innovation.

The zoom link is sent in the registration confirmation email.

Learning Planet Festival: https://festival.learning-planet.org/

Additionnal information: Tribune published by Raphaële Bidault-Waddington to advocate for training and creativity to tackle the Covid crisis in 2020: https://medium.com/@rbidaultwaddington/covid-19-an-economic-resilience-strategy-via-training-and-creativity-fffcd04b50f6