COAL mobilizes artists and cultural actors on societal and environmental issues and supports the emergence of a culture of ecology through its actions such as the COAL Art & Environment Prize, curation of exhibitions, consultancy services for institutions and communities, European cooperation, and the animation of conferences, workshops and ressource0 website

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Research-creation : The Farm of world cultures at Zone Sensible

Through the program “The Table and the Territory” and with the support of Creative Europe, a European Union program, the Sustainable Culture Laboratory (COAL / LADYSS) is associated with the Zone Sensible, led by its partner the Poetic Party, for the creation of the farm for world cultures.

The city of Saint-Denis has 134 different nationalities which are as much cultural, culinary and gestural diversity. To address this issue, the Sustainable Culture Laboratory La Table et le Territoire takes Sensitive Zone, the Urban Farm of Saint-Denis, the last market garden of the 19th century still active near Paris, transformed by the Party Poetic on a farm, with an artistic program focused on the themes: Nature, Culture, Food.

The artist Olivier Darné, Pauline Guinard (ENS Paris), Nathalie Blanc (CNRS LADYSS), Marine Legrand (MNHN), Christophe Saintagne (Chef de cuisine) and Christophe Lavelle (geneticist, CNRS and National Museum of Natural History) accompanied by COAL, are studying the possibilities of the emergence of a new terroir in Seine-Saint-Denis.

Starting from the premise that sustainable food is linked to the attachment of residents to food territory, the team members go to meet the inhabitants of the city of Saint-Denis and this exceptional food diversity in order to collect their recipes. , their gestures and their food uses, which will become supports and subjects of plastic works for the implementation of a farm of the cultures of the world in Sensitive Zone, Urban Farm of Saint-Denis.

During these interviews, the inhabitants of Saint-Denis tell their recipes: those of the past (whose flavor and memory persist even though we no longer know how to make them), those of the present, made daily with the means available, and in those of the future, dream recipes for facing a future to be invented. From these recipe stories, various artistic and scientific productions will then be produced: recipe books, table sets, audio works, web blog, vegetable planting and collective cooking.

The project aims to promote the terroir of Saint-Denis, to work on the aesthetic, gustatory and nutritive qualities of local culinary know-how to imagine together what would be the specifics of sustainable food to come in Seine-Saint-Denis.

The recipe desk: We invite the residents of Saint-Denis to come and share their food and culinary practices. During interviews, we wish to meet the inhabitants of Saint-Denis to discover and collect their recipes. The objective is to produce scientific and artistic content from these interviews, such as a Saint-Denis recipe book, the audio dissemination of interview extracts, the publication on the internet of interview extracts, the planting vegetables needed for recipes, or even the realization of these same recipes at meetings and banquets.

The creative writing workshops: Residents of Saint-Denis are also invited to participate in a writing workshop that takes the form of a collective experiment. Each participant is invited to modify, in their own words, scientific texts concerning food and agricultural production. It’s a way to experience food issues noticeably and perhaps look at standard representations of food differently.

THE PROJECT TEAM
Whether they are scientists, from the humanities or the natural sciences, or whether they are artists, the team members all have at heart the environmental challenges and the relationship they have with the territories.

The Poetic Party is taking over the future Zone Sensible farm, located in Saint-Denis. It is a grouping of artists, thinkers and doers gathered around questions and bees that they pose in public space. This collective, questions the daily newspaper and tries to go to see elsewhere if it is there, and this in particular through the art and the resources of the territories. Its founder Olivier Darné is a visual artist and urban bee breeder, known for setting hives in an urban environment. His approach crosses plastic research, issues around cultural, social and urban diversity and harvesting of a honey cultivated in an urban environment, “Miel Béton”.

COAL aims to foster the emergence of a culture of ecology and to support the essential role of creation and culture in raising awareness and implementing concrete solutions. COAL designs and organizes contemporary art exhibitions, cultural events, awards the COAL Art and Environment Prize, supports artists, contributes to the transformation of territories with its Sustainable Culture Laboratory and is notably at the initiative of ArtCOP21 , the cultural agenda of COP21 in 2015. As part of the Lab, the association will be represented by Lauranne Germond, its director, and Jessica Leclercq, project manager.

The LADYSS-CNRS, Social Dynamics and Recomposition of Spaces laboratory is a multidisciplinary laboratory combining two main disciplines, geography and sociology. The laboratory devotes its work to the study of social and spatial recompositions related to globalization and environmental problems. LADYSS is represented on this project by its director Nathalie Blanc. Also research director at the National Center for Scientific Research, she specializes in environmental and aesthetic issues and is also an artist and art curator.

Associated researchers: Pauline Guinard is a lecturer in geography at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Her research focuses on the links between art and cities. Marine Legrand, post-doctoral fellow in environmental anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History, will lead the writing workshops. She uses fiction writing to reveal sensitive experiences. Lou Gauthier is currently a student at the ENS ULM in Geography, and a student at the Museum of Natural History in Environmental Anthropology.

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