Le Laboratoire

Hub for research and original artistic initiatives, LABORATOIRE develops works rooted in the social and historical specificities of the locations where they are created, such as in Grenoble, Lyon, Marseille, Vancouver, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Cologne, Algiers, and Douala, as well as at symbolic epicenters such as Chernobyl, Sarajevo, Fukushima, and the shores of the Mediterranean.

Often operating at an urban scale, these works combine local identity-based sensibilities accumulated over time, with our contemporary reality, defined notably by the global acceleration of social shifts, symbolic and commercial exchanges, and climatic and ecosystemic disruptions. Our territorial interpretations seek to reinvent public space by staging and representing it anew, breaking free from inherited constraints to unfold alternative forms of coherence. For each project, LABORATOIRE establishes an “associated milieu”; to sketch out this space where the imagination can be liberated, this milieu must marry the most marginalized and dominated languages ​​and skills with scholarly forms and languages, expanding rational knowledge by integrating intuitive forms of intelligence.

The unique nature of this approach has led LABORATOIRE to forge increasingly complex interdisciplinary alliances. Visual artists, writers, geographers, urban planners, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, composers, gardeners, landscape architects, architects, and shepherds—hundreds of creators scattered across the globe—have over time been invited to participate in this patient, cross-disciplinary endeavor. This is the case for writers such as Patrick Chamoiseau, Jacques Lacarrière, Ahmadou Kourouma, and Abdelwahab Meddeb; visual artists like Rekha Rodwittiya, William Kentridge, Ester Grinspum, Rachid Koraichi, Lu Shengzhong, and Jeremy Wood; philosophers including Daniel Bougnoux, Bernard Stiegler, Yves Citton, and Bruno Latour; and architects, geographers, and urban planners such as Pierre Sansot, Augustin Berque, and Stefano Boeri.
This interplay between the concrete, everyday experience of ordinary people—rooted in a specific place—and the experiences of authors scattered across the globe sparks a process of agitation. It shakes up and revitalizes our most commonplace perceptions, making visible the unthought aspects of our era and exposing the fragility of the dominant representations and interpretations of a reality that constantly slips away—never to be found exactly where we look for it, nor in the form we expect.

From 2003 to 2020, Le LABORATOIRE produced a journal titled *local.contemporain*, an initiative aimed at refreshing our perspective by bringing together educators, artists, and philosophers to explore emerging social forms. This publishing project also gave rise to collaborative initiatives such as *C’est Dimanche!* (2005), a random collection of photographs; *Collection de collections* (Collection of Collections), launched at the invitation of Marseille-Provence 2013; and *paysages-in-situ* (2015), a “forger’s game” centered on the landscape.

From 2016 to 2020, Le LABORATOIRE developed the artistic direction for *paysage>paysages*, a platform for innovation and initiatives focused on the landscape, spearheaded by the Isère Department across its 7,431 km² territory.