SG éditions has renewed the experience of programming a free conference series open to all. If the theme this year is the «Mountain,» the association's objectives remain the same: on the one hand, to offer high school and university students the opportunity to meet philosophers, artists, and designers who question space and address contemporary issues in their own ways; and on the other hand, to move beyond a school setting to mix audiences. With this in mind, the conferences are organized in partnership with other local cultural players. Thus, some conferences will be hosted at the Volcans auditorium, as in previous years, but also at the Cinéma Le Cristal and the choreographic incubator, La Manufacture. A diversity of venues to consider multiple approaches, as announced by the conference titles: «Depicting the Mountain,» «Seeing the Mountain,» «Narrating the Mountain,» and «Dancing the Mountain.».
First Conference: Depicting the Mountain
Arthur Novat, a painter and graphic designer, focused on interpreting a sensitive landscape on Thursday, February 2nd, describing how he has been working in his family studio for several years. He defines the role of the «panoramist» and the function of the graphic designer when confronting mountainous landscapes. «By abandoning the naturalist model of depicting a vision untouched by human activity, we can certainly experience the landscape as an engagement with the polysensory, intelligible, and cerebral world. It's an intimate and precious landscape for each of us, a path for new, dynamic conversation and exchange, equidistant between the ethnologist and the geographer, between the scholar and the painter,» explains Arthur Novat.
2nd Conference: Seeing the Mountain
On the program for the second event dedicated to mountains, the Saint-Géraud high school cultural association, in partnership with the Le Cristal cinema, offered a journey beyond borders: heading to the Italian as well as Nepalese mountains with the film The Eight Mountains by Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix Van Groeningen (Jury Prize at Cannes 2022). A 2-hour and 27-minute screening during which the vertical lines of the peaks follow each other, testing the bonds of a deep friendship. Between wanderings and stays, the film poetically questions the contrasting desires of two beings, between the one who stays and the one who leaves, between the one who puts down roots and the one who roams.
3rd Conference: Narrating the Mountain
Pierre-Henry Frangne, a philosophy professor at the University of Rennes, honored us by leading the third conference. His research area is art and aesthetics. Within this field, he works on landscape, photographic landscape of mountains, and the historical and existential meaning of mountaineering, among other topics. On these subjects, he has published several books, including *De l’alpinisme* (On Mountaineering), published by Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2019. Why and how should we tell about this experience that few share: the ascent of a summit? What is at stake for the author and for their reader in this narrative, from the perspective of meanings as well as writing styles? Pierre-Henry was able to address this issue in a theoretical and overarching way, drawing on his experiences as a mountaineer and writer.
4th Conference: Dancing the Mountain
To conclude this conference cycle, dancer and choreographer Olivier Lefrançois and musician Elise Escarguel sat together to explore the perception of the mountain and its relationship to the body: the imprint left by experience or physical encounter with the mountain, as well as the source of inspiration it can offer.
After questioning the dupe role of the panorama painter, delving into the lives of those called «Mountain People,» and once mountaineering practice has demonstrated its significant philosophical contributions, it is now the body's turn to ponder the mountain. SG editions, in partnership with La Manufacture, wishes to offer an approach where practices and theories take shape within a space. Thus, the conference-dance becomes a means of highlighting thoughts in motion before an audience.
