Dissect

Part round table, part live performance, a multidisciplinary debate with works of contemporary art and design staged in an experimental dispositif, 2019

From an original idea of Samuel Bianchini and Emanuele Quinz, developed by the Reflective Interaction research group of EnsadLab, the laboratory of the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (EnsAD), PSL University, Paris.

Scenography designed and directed by Samuel Bianchini, with Adrien Bonnerot and Pernelle Poyet (object design), Annie Leuridan (light design), Sylvie Tissot (software engineering), and Brice Ammar-Khodja (video). Realization of the table and its utensils: Atelier H2.

This project is supported by La Chaire Arts & Sciences of École Polytechnique, École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs - PSL, and the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation. The research on new forms of interactive light writing is carried out in partnership with the “Dynamic Light” project led by Concordia University (Montreal) supported by Les Fonds de Recherche du Québec.

The first iteration of Dissect will be performed at the Centre Georges Pompidou as part of the Behavioral Matter symposium on March 29th, at 8:30 p.m. Programmed in parallel with the exhibition La Fabrique du vivant, we will talk about the living with living works by EcologicStudio (Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto), and with experts Marie-Sarah Adenis (designer and biologist), Frédérique Aït Touati (historian of science), Claire Brunet (philosopher), Emanuele Coccia (philosopher), Olivier Dauchot (physicist), Manuelle Freire (research development across Arts & Science), Emanuele Quinz (historian of art and design), and Patricia Ribault (historian and theorist of Gestaltung).

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Dissect, Samuel Bianchini and Emanuele Quinz (dir.), Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, March 2019. Photos: © Samuel Bianchini - ADAGP

To renew the round table format (which is often only round by virtue of its name), to restore more lively forms of exchange than the usual conference procession of rehearsed speeches, hoping to spark radically multidisciplinary debates and grapple with the very objects of the discussion, we present a new format for public debate: Dissect. Critically referencing classic anatomy lessons - like that of Doctor Tulp, portrayed by Rembrandt in 1632 - Dissect is an updated theatre for the analysis and discussion of contemporary works of art and design in the very presence of the works. We ought to not be talking about things, but rather with them, combining words, gestures, and objects in a public dispositif specifically designed for such an interactive process.

Dissect, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, March 2019
Video - 6mn 33s - High band request
Images and editing: Corentin Laplanche-Tsutsui and Kiana Hubert-Low

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Dissect, Samuel Bianchini and Emanuele Quinz (dir.), Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, March 2019. Photos: © Samuel Bianchini - ADAGP

Dissect #2

The second presentation of Dissect took place at the Grand Palais (Paris) in the framework of Paris Photo 2019 with artworks of Meghann Riepenhoff, in the presence of the artist, with interventions by Emmanuel Alloa (philosopher), Federica Chiocchetti (writer and curator), Luce Lebart (photography historian and curator), Emanuele Quinz (art and design historian), Pascal Viel (chemist), Dork Zabunyan (art and film historian). Using the ancient technique of cyanotype, Meghann Riepenhoff questions the nature of our relationship to landscapes, time and impermanence, with experiments that intertwine chemistry and light.

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Dissect, Samuel Bianchini and Emanuele Quinz (dir.), Paris Photo, Grand Palais, Paris, November 2019. Photos : © Samuel Bianchini - ADAGP

Dissect #3

The third presentation of Dissect was the 2nd of November 2022 at Tieranatomische Theater of the Humboldt University (Berlin) in the framework of the Berlin Science Week with the artwork "Amygdala" of Marco Donnarumma, with the presence of the artist, with the interventions of the neurosurgeon Thomas Picht, the theater scholar Maaike Bleeker, the art historian Horst Bredekamp, the computer scientist Johann Habakuk Israel, the anthropologist Joffrey Becker and the philosopher Margrit Shildrick. Moderators : Patricia Ribault (weißensee school of art and design berlin) and Samuel Bianchini (École des Arts Décoratifs - Paris).
"Amygdala" is an artificially intelligent (AI) robot in the form of an uncanny human-like limb hung inside an industrial-grade computer server cabinet, which performs a ritual of purification known as “skin-cutting”. Driven by biomimetic neural networks, “Amygdala” is capable of interactive and changing behaviour recalling animal’s movements, creating an ambiguity between the organic and the technological.

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Dissect #3, Samuel Bianchini and Emanuele Quinz (dir.) with the collaboration of Patricia Ribault, Berlin Science Week, Tieranatomische Theater, Berlin, November 2022.
Photos : © Alexandra Ruppert

Dissect #4

The fourth presentation of Dissect was the 4th of November 2022 at Tieranatomische Theater of the Humboldt University (Berlin) in the framework of the Berlin Science Week in cooperation with Tomás Saraceno with the interventions of the arachnologist Peter Jäger, the researcher in Cultural Studies Martin Müller, the microbiologist Regine Hengge, the artist and researcher Alice Jarry, the behavioral ecologist Alex Jordan, the socio-legal scholar Xenia Chiaramonte, and the spiders of the TA T., with the moderation of Patricia Ribault (weißensee school of art and design berlin) and Emanuele Quinz (Université Paris 8 and EnsAD).
Tomás Saraceno aims to seek out a more equal balance of human, techno- and bio-diversity, with the understanding that knowledge is produced from specific situations. His works with spiders encourage us to reconsider our relationship to them and sense a world that is disappearing, calling for more interspecies collaboration.