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About

A European observation of the creation process

ARGOS is a European research-creation programme (Europe Creative, 2018-2021) which aims to create an observatory of the creative processes in the field of performing arts. Founded by a consortium of five European universities (the University of Rennes 2, coordinator of the project, the University of the Peloponnese, the University of Lisbon-FLUL, the University of Antwerp, the University of Lille), ARGOS focuses on the observation of creative processes in artistic and cultural institutions or districts: Teatro O Bando (Portugal), Societas (Italy), Théâtre National de Bretagne (France), Au bout du plongeoir (France), as well as Moussem and HammanaArtist House (Belgium and Lebanon). The aim of this programme is to create polyphonic narratives based on the analysis of creative processes in the performing arts and to share them with civil society. 

Why the name Argos?

ARGOS is a double reference to Greek mythology. It is not only the name of Jason’s ship that set out to conquer the Golden Fleece and led by the song of Orpheus, but also the name of a Greek monster with a hundred eyes that had a panoramic view of its surroundings and never quite fell asleep.  ARGOS also proposes the creation of a multiple observatory where five categories of observers share the creative process together: researchers, artists, cultural mediators, students and spectators are thus brought together in and through the act of creation. This combination of glances allows the advent of an increased gaze, each observer being able to appropriate the dynamics of the work in the creative gesture.

Research terrains and angles of approach 

To carry out its program, the ARGOS team members carry out, in whole or in part, five types of experiments in five different locations and then two research workshops in which they evaluate the shared adventures in the performing arts. For 30 months, five types of observation are thus experimented:

  • Integrated observation, where viewers and artists are engaged in sharing a community place and time. In Portugal, in Palmela, with the Teatro O Bando (Joao Brites);
  • Participatory observation, where viewers act directly on the creative process. In Italy, in Cesena, with the Societas (Chiara Guidi);
  • Immersive observation where the viewers are equipped with virtual reality helmets and experience part of the rehearsals in immersion. In France, in Rennes, with the Théâtre National de Bretagne (Claire Ingrid Cottanceau and Olivier Mellano);
  • Creative observation where artists share their first notes and references with the observers so that everyone is part of the creative project. In France, in Thorigné-Fouillard, with Au Bout du Plongeoir (Frédérique Mingant).
  • Intercultural observation where viewers are encouraged to experience the diversity of their cultural roots. In Lebanon, near Beirut, at the Hammana Artist House, Moussem’s partner;

Development of innovative observation methodologies and creation of transmedia narratives

Each ARGOS member is invited to comment on the rehearsals that he or she has followed with transmedia stories (articulating texts, videos, photographs, drawings, collages, sound recordings). They can make their annotations on a Rocketbook allowing digital distribution on a platform common to the project. Depending on the experiments, he or she will be able to follow these rehearsals live, in streaming or in 360° immersive observations thanks to specific headsets. These approaches, supported by a web documentary made by Lagencevoid, as well as the ARGOS website, contribute to new challenges for research on creative processes. Indeed, all these possibilities to apprehend the processes of creation, to share them between observers and to report on them, participate in a new way of questioning the creative gestures in the performing arts and offer an original collaboration between researchers, artists and members of the civil society to show the creative phase of the production of shows.

New methodologies

Argos is developing innovative methodologies to increase its insight into the factories of contemporary creation.

The creation of observer communities

ARGOS creates extended communities of observers and does not limit the observation of creation processes to a few insiders. In addition to researchers and artists, the observation is open to students, cultural mediators from institutions or third places associated with the project as well as heterogeneous groups of spectators.

From artistic experience to its sensitive narrative

These communities of observers construct a polyphonic narrative around the act of creation. The gaze is thus increased, as is the perception of each person through the exchange on the creative process in progress. Thus, the constitution of each singular narrative of an experiment, associated with that of the others, bears witness to the polyphonic activity of the staging while producing new traces of the creative process.

The aims of ARGOS 

Towards a new sharing of knowledge

Each ARGOS experiment leads to a movement of each category of observers.

  • For the researcher, it is a question of abandoning an overhanging glance on the work to put himself at the school of creation.
  • For the artist, to move from a discourse on art to a discourse of art, directly in touch with the practice.
  • For the student, to grasp the polyphonic dimension of a creative process by understanding the profession of each member of an artistic team.
  • For the cultural mediator, to verify the hypothesis that the observation of the early stages of a creation opens to another appropriation of the work at the time of its public presentation.
  • For the spectator, to experience the transformation of the viewer’s gaze on the work when he or she has access to its factory.

ARGOS therefore intends to create the conditions for new encounters based on new ways of relating to the gesture of artistic creation.

Towards new dreams

The horizon of the ARGOS project is to set up a European network made up of communities brought together by the experience of the sensitive and its narrative, a network celebrating creativity rather than mere “access” to the work.

ARGOS #2 (September 2021 / September 2024) will be the time for the transfer of the experience in other European countries (Germany, Spain, Serbia, Montenegro, Romania, Lithuania, Poland), and in the world (Lebanon, Quebec, Brazil, Japan) with university and artistic partners already approached). It will enable the configuration of a structuring project for training, dissemination and the permanent invention of new relationships between artists, audiences and educational actors in the crucible of creative processes on an international scale, by labelling Creative Factories, setting up a nomadic university, while continuing to create a European observatory of creative processes.

Les Fabriques Créatives

Les Fabriques Créatives will be the third place of artistic knowledge.  Ephemeral and nomadic, they will be able to establish themselves everywhere in Europe and give a boost to isolated territories as well as metropolises. This label will be proposed to artistic and cultural structures or third places meeting three fundamental criteria: the experimentation of new protocols of collaboration between artistic teams and communities of viewers; the opening to the preparatory time of the show according to diversified and innovative modalities; the restitution of these aesthetic and relational experiences within the framework of a European collaborative platform.

Nomadic university training

The aim of these new interactive dynamics will be to modify in the long term the relationship to creation for the education and vocational training sectors (taking into account professions related to the performing arts in the context of innovative university training, implementation of work-linked training courses, nomadic education, etc.).

An observatory of creative processes at the international level

The European Creative Factories label will make it possible to create an international observatory of creative processes based on the experiments carried out in these research-creation centres. Thanks to the contributions of digital technology, the experimentations carried out within the framework of ARGOS # 2 will be accessible to a diversified public by creating new ways of access to theatrical art.

The challenge of the ARGOS project is therefore to conceive culture as a driving force for innovation and creativity (including at the technological and societal level) capable of promoting intercultural dialogue and leading to the territorial development of new models of artistic collaboration.