Eric PRIGENT
Tourcoing, FR
Second year coordinator Le Fresnoy, National Studio of Contemporary Arts, training establishment, production and artistic dissemination through “Panorama” meetings.
Biography
After studying visual arts at the University of Haute-Bretagne Rennes 2, he is a teacher for the cultural service of the French Embassy in Morocco, where he also works in the field of graphic design and creation.
He is also a graduate of the Institute of European Studies of the University of Paris 8 as part of research on the emergence of multimedia technologies and their consequences for artistic and cultural creation and dissemination.
From 1993 to 2001, he joined the Center International de Création Vidéo (Montbéliard), an artists’ residence and art and research center specializing in digital technologies. He was successively in charge of regional development, then head of multimedia projects and events and director of communication.
Since 2002, he has been the educational coordinator for the second year at Le Fresnoy, devoted to digital creation.
www.lefresnoy.net
Eric Prigent's answers
We are an institution that depends on higher education, the Ministry of Culture, and we complement the major national art schools in France, ENSBA, Decorative Arts, Fémis for cinema and the National School of the photo of Arles. And the Fresnoy project is a project that was thought out in 87, to open in 97 and which questioned the relationship between technology and art. Here we welcome artists from all over the world, there were about 53 nationalities in the last competition, and we have a specificity which is therefore, in a particular course, to offer young artists the opportunity to create works, in fact a work every year. We have a two-year course. The first year is devoted to photography, cinema and video. And the second year, which I coordinate, it is devoted to digital creation in all its forms and this is where it meets your questions about this master’s project, that is to say that it is a kind of course, finally, which is offered to young artists who, to enter Le Fresnoy, have either the baccalaureate and seven years of professional experience to test, or the baccalaureate and already a master’s degree, therefore a master’s degree in art school, university, etc And this double possibility of returning to Fresnoy, it also facilitates the routes which are a little singular and which also interest us. Another particularity is that at Le Fresnoy, there are no permanent teachers, but nationally and internationally recognized guest teacher artists who work regularly with our young artists. We have a year that is organized in a very particular way since October and November, we are writing the project under the direction of the guest curator artist of the educational team and then, the technical and production teams, we validate this project in December. These projects go into production in January and are therefore finalized in mid-June, as is the case today, when we will finalize 24 first-year student projects, 24 second-year student projects and then, other projects, which can be students, guests, guest-scientists. And what we produce are completely diverse forms, it can be films, it can be videos, it can be photography, a performance, an immersive device, virtual reality, augmented reality, a film entirely made in computer-generated images, a film in compositing, really all forms, in fact.
Indeed, if I now go a little more directly into our concerns. Once this work is created, it is presented here in a public and professional event, which is called “Panorama”. The 23rd “Panorama” will take place from September 24 (2021 editor’s note) and then it’s a big professional meeting today and also a meeting for the public. And then, it’s also part of the singularity of the place, it’s to broadcast nationally and internationally, locally and regionally all the works are produced here. Another and final specificity is that we put resources in place, there is a team here of 39 people and each young artist has a budget of 8400 euros to produce a work. What you need to know is that ultimately, we learn here that the teaching is done through the very concrete production of a project, its development and its initial design, therefore its artistic and conceptual issues until at the first professional presentation at “Panorama”, therefore at Le Fresnoy and then outside, since in terms of distribution, around 550 places in the world broadcast works coming out of this house last year.
In what way does a Master’s degree in Creative Media seem relevant to you today? The answer is definitely yes. Obviously, we fall more into the category of directors and that indeed, through their training at Frenoy, the young artists who are here use these media and sometimes it’s the first time they’ve done it. As a result, having training and this type of training beforehand is also interesting since you master both artistic and conceptual issues. I think it’s very important to also have a real practice of the tools we use, it’s one of our characteristics, it’s also an invitation to explore tools.
Something that is absolutely essential. It is above all the question of monitoring, both technological monitoring and artistic monitoring. It all depends on what you mean by director, we at Fresnoy defend the notion of author and people who have a purpose, an artistic purpose. Because today, the question of the creative industries, in fact, it tends to amalgamate everything a bit and makes everyone a bit of an author. I think that is not the case and that is why, I think, we must be very attentive to what is happening in contemporary creation at the level of the use of media today, in our any sector of creative activity, be it cinema and not strictly animated cinema, be it the field of dance, the field of theatre, the field of plastic arts and the field of opera. These are quite marvelous territories of experimentation, precisely, and of the relationship between technology and creation. And I think that in a formation, even a formation can be more different, obviously, from what is done here at Fresnoy, I think that it is absolutely necessary to have this monitoring there, to also know what is happening, to measure all the issues, including the critical issues of technologies today. For me, it has to be an integral part of a training course.
I would say that it is the mixture of the four items that you mention, the acquisition of knowledge, know-how, an ability to design and produce. What is important is the research aspect when doing a creative project. The question of knowledge is also to be measured against the skills and prerequisites that are required as part of his master’s degree. But it’s always interesting to make proposals for deepening, broadening a more or less mastered creative field. And I also think it’s a real notion, it’s the transversality between all that. I think it’s also important to connect this to the realization of a professional project which, I think, falls within the framework of a master also at work. So in relation to the question of knowledge, indeed, all the conceptual, artistic and historical aspects are to be taken into account, as well as critical analysis. That’s a little bit what I can answer here very quickly.
As we are in the contemporary art sector and as I was saying earlier in response to another question, a lot is happening in terms of the use of digital technologies in creation. It’s one of our challenges here at Le Fresnoy, but it’s not just us who do that. This is one of the challenges of creation, period, and that is why this monitoring is absolutely essential. This is therefore a master’s degree course of great interest. Obviously that concerns us less, since the students who come here already have a master’s degree.
I would say that it is incessant and that the high technological level in any case, by this watch there, inevitably, the artists will take into consideration the techniques concerned, will also question them in a critical way as I said earlier. time is very important and they will actually experience them. Two or three years ago, we didn’t have a dedicated artistic project here, for example artificial intelligence or calling on it. This has been the case for three years now. In the image processing sector, community technologies make it possible to create CG movies in a way that is completely different from before imaging. The use of photogrammetry is also of the same order. What also questions us is the aesthetic dimension which is systematic and can sometimes be provided by this technology in question. For example, photogrammetry and point clouds, it’s always the same visual aesthetic. And when we actually work in the field of art and creation, we rather seek to find singularities. Suddenly, the development of technologies and their dimension, in particular visual, something that questions us enormously here, I think that we really have to take it into account. Why? Because otherwise, we have totally standardized and totally formatted projects.
These are creatives and artists who have created a portfolio of convincing works, so much in this field, we would be very happy, we are already linked to Mexico by several Mexican artists who have made a journey here at Fresnoy . As a result, we will always be interested, of course, in the new creative paths that can be put forward.
It’s always interesting to invite artists, that’s for sure, and especially artists who have a totally different point of view in relation to the times or in relation to what even the creative industries could impose. I think the disruption in thought and viewpoints only makes things richer. This is what is happening here, for example at Le Fresnoy, through the relationship between Arts and Sciences, of course, we work with technologies, some of which are digital, but which can be emerging and which inevitably, it is very interesting to see how an artist, even within a research laboratory, will completely alter chains and patterns of thought. And that, I think, also has an extremely creative dimension that should be integrated even within the framework of a master’s-type training.