ÉSADHAR – École Supérieure d’Art et Design exhibits at ENSM Le Havre!

Conference with Alexandra Arène, architect and member of the SOC studio (Société d’Objets Cartographiques) and Perrin Remonté, freelance cartographer, on 3 June 2025, at the ENSM, 10 quai Frissard, Le Havre.

The exhibition is part of the ‘Territoire composite – cartographie d’une nouvelle région’ research and creative workshop, a cross-disciplinary art in progress programme launched by ésadhar in 2022, École Supérieure d’Art et Design Le Havre-Rouen (option Art mention Environnements et Situations Publiques in Le Havre and option Art in Rouen), and the École des Beaux-Arts de Marseille, a Campus art Méditerranée institution (workshop Espaces [&] Publics et Territoire composite), in collaboration with the ENSM until 19 June 2025.

From the ocean and river banks that cradle the cities of Le Havre and Rouen to the Mediterranean shores along the coast of Marseille, a number of places and communities have been meeting and discovering each other over the last three years.

The ‘Territoire composite – cartographie d’une nouvelle région’ Research and Creation Workshop, initiated in 2022 by ésadhar, École Supérieure d’Art et Design Le Havre-Rouen, and the Marseille School of Fine Arts, has given life to a long-term experimental project in which the educational act merges with the creative act and vice versa.

The aim of this inter-school project is to provoke a dialogue between students, artists and professionals from different areas of society, so that there can be a confrontation and an overlap between the three territories in which these establishments are located. This work takes the form of a constellation of actions, encounters, gestures, materials and situations experienced by the participants directly in the field or remotely by means of postal and digital mailings.

This initiative stems from a desire to break down the barriers between disciplines and their respective tools, to explore new ways of transmitting knowledge and to encourage healthy emulation. How can the options taught at ésadhar and the Marseille School of Fine Arts pool their approaches and pluralise their aspirations?

As we moved around the site and shared our experiences, many other poetic and epistemological questions were added to the initial premise:

What does it mean for an artist to “invest a territory”? What legitimacy does he or she have to work there and tell its story?
How can we make the dynamics and relationships that unfold there more permeable?
What kind of attention should be paid and what wanderings should be pursued?
How can we express and transmit our experiences, both materially and conceptually?

From this sharing, territories have begun to take shape, the outlines of a new region on the horizon of the imaginations shared by this shifting and scattered community: ‘composite’ is its name and at the same time its nature.
The strength of this new region lies in the creation of alliances and formal connections, both between bodies and between environments.
And to do this, there is no pre-established methodology. It’s the experimental art of pointing out intuition, solidifying it and putting it at risk that is at play in this unique Research and Creation Workshop.

Text by Licia Demuro,
Curator in residence at ésadhar