Vatos Locos Video: “Designing and implementing artistic practice projects to combat racism and discrimination”

Audiovisual creation projects can be powerful tools for citizen co-construction.
This training will be led by Benoît Labourdette in two stages:

Design 9:30 - 12:30

• Presentation of experiences and examples of actions.
• Co-construction of a citizen’s thinking and methodology to address racism and discrimination.
• To understand the construction of the project, between public stakes and institutional control.

Implement 14:30 - 17:30

• Methodology for the organization of effective audiovisual workshops in the context of the fight against racism and discrimination.
• Experience of putting into practice.
• Collective development of courses of action.

Training Design

The exact training program had been devised collectively with the aim of bringing practical tools adapted to the realities of the field, innovative and operational, in order to respond to a precise and particularly complicated problem to be tackled without being normative. racism and discrimination.

Example of action at the Museum of Man

After an introduction on the philosophy of citizen actions using audiovisual creativity, I presented the example of actions on this theme that I conceived and carried out with Arcadi Passeurs d’images Île-de-France and the Musée de l ’Man in Paris.

This is a particular example, but the participants in the training were very convinced. So we decided to dig this type of workshops, which consists in making silent animated films from cut-out papers, in which the written words are very important. This invites to construct meaning with images and words, and it is a very playful activity.

The market

I saw that around the mediatheque La Passerelle (which is a beautiful building, architecturally very open on the outside), that day there was the market. A meeting place where signs of discrimination can be numerous. The workshops that one proposes must be open on the real, also to do with the potential of the unexpected. So I asked everyone to go to the market and buy an object, which would become “actor” in a collective film that we were going to realize. With the thought of the theme: fight against discrimination.

It is a playful proposal, which already questions its relation to the world. Creativity is immediately mobilized in its relation to reality. The objects were there, on the ground. The mind begins to work on its own.

Going for Adventure

Concretely, at my level, I knew I had to take advantage of this opportunity, the market, but I did not know what collective film I was going to offer them to do. It is important to risk yourself, to go “adventure” yourself, to invent collectively with the people you propose to work for. There is no “recipe” for a successful action. Being oneself in a posture of work and questioning is the best way, in my opinion, to impel a profound creative dynamic.

The words

I made them do a brainstorming of words around the theme, here it is:

I note the words on the screen as they come. This makes a great emulation.

At noon, I put out all these words, to print them on paper, in several sizes. This seems simple to say, but finding a printer that works in the media library was not so easy! I also looked for as many pairs of scissors as possible, borrowed from all the staff of the media library!

At the return of the meal, there were on the ground all these sheets of paper, with all the words we had formulated that very morning. Each one had to cut out the words he wanted, which were going to be put in relation with their object, for a large silent collective film, which was going to be shot in sequence.

Shooting the collective movie

The fact that there is no montage, that the film is shot in sequence requires collaboration, listening to the other, because at the slightest mistake, we have to redo the whole film.

I had never made a dumb collective film, in which the words were on the screen and not the sound. I was surprised at the poetry that each one could develop, with a visual work between image, objects and texts of which I would not have suspected the richness.

Here is the film, whose title is “Choice of words” (7’22s):