Interview with PaaLabRes

Samuel (the interviewer) : First, I'm going to ask you to introduce yourself briefly as members of PaaLabRes and also to specify your activities outside PaaLabRes. Let's start with Nicolas.

Nicolas: My name is Nicolas Sidoroff. At the moment, I am working at the Cefedem Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, officially in a half-time position. The Cefedem is a Center devoted to music teachers’ training. In addition, I do many other things that could be considered as half-time jobs in very varied musical practices on stage, but certainly not only on stage: on other places and lots of activities that we could classify as Cultural Action. And I also do research within the framework of PaaLabRes, but also with this idea of trying to fight against two types of confiscation: on the one hand, the confiscation of music by professional musicians and the confiscation of research by people who are labeled as researchers, and who ask you to keep quiet when you haven't read this book, when you haven't read so and so, when you don't know how to refer to something, when you don't have the right footnotes and all that. These two approaches summarize my two fights: my activity at the Cefedem and my musical activity in the broad sense.

Samuel (the interviewer) : Thank you Nicolas. Pascal ?

Pascal : Hello everyone. My name is Pascal Pariaud. I teach clarinet at the Ecole Nationale de Musique (ENM) in Villeurbanne. I'm a member of PaaLabRes and a musician. I play improvised music as well as classical and contemporary music. At the moment I am trying to develop as many actions as possible in primary and secondary schools in order to reach a public which is not coming to the music school.

Samuel (the interviewer) : Thank you Pascal. Gilles ?

Gilles : Hello. My name is Gilles Laval, I am an improvising musician. I teach at the Ecole Nationale de Musique in Villeurbanne. I teach electric guitar and free improvisation. I coordinate the rock and amplified music department. I am a member of PaaLabRes since the very beginning of this adventure. I also manage an association called Chef Menteur through which I develop my own projects. The latest one I'm working on is a creation for 100 electric guitars. I mention this because it is a project in which many interactions are developed in what is proposed during the working process, with many encounters between the people who participate in this project. A project that encourages people to meet each other, notably professionals and amateurs, and that is also transgenerational. It's a project that bounces back and forth all the time between the creations that I make and my work as a teacher. There are very strong relationships, always existing all the time. And I also taught at Cefedem Rhône-Alpes for a few years at the beginning of the implementation of the Diplôme d’Etat de musiques actuelles amplifiées [State Diploma in “today’s amplified music”, often named outside France as “popular music”].

Samuel (the interviewer) : Thank you Gilles. Jean-Charles ?

Jean-Charles : Hello. My name is Jean-Charles François, I am a musician, percussionist, improviser, sometimes composer, and non-confiscator researcher! I was a freelance musician in the 1960s in Paris, then I had an academic career in the United States in San Diego in the 1970s and 1980s. Then I created and directed the Cefedem Rhône-Alpes from 1990 to 2007. I am a member of PaaLabRes and I have been very involved in the development of the three editions we have produced. And now of course, I am retired, but I continue to play a few concerts when it is allowed. However, nowadays…!

Samuel (the interviewer) : Can you introduce PaaLabRes in a few words, Jean-Charles?

Jean-Charles : PaaLabRes [Pratiques artistiques en actes, Laboratoire de Recherches (Artistic practices in acts, Research laboratory)] is a collective that focuses on music that does not result in definitive works of art. It includes improvisation, but not only. It's obviously very concerned with musical practices in action. There is an idea of reconciling the field of research with musical practices, of reconciling the academic world with the world of musical practice, and also of reconciling the world of musical practice with music teaching. So, there you have it. I don't know if you want to add anything else. The other very central idea is the meeting of the diversity of musical cultures and also the idea of hybrid and transdisciplinary forms of music.

Samuel (the interviewer) : Very good. Thank you for these presentations. So, let's start with the first questions that have a particular link with higher education institutions in the arts. How, as members of PaaLabRes, would you describe your current relationship with these institutions?

Gilles : So, I can speak about it. I have perhaps a specific status because I teach rock and today's amplified music and I am at the moment confronted with the problems in relation to higher education, which is actually often off limits for this kind of music, for these aesthetics, which is also the case for world traditional music. I speak in particular about the CNSMD [Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse]. I do not speak about the places of higher education in teacher training like the Cefedem which notably in Rhône-Alpes region was one of the first to integrate these aesthetics. This is largely due to Jean-Charles François, who (in 2000) modified the whole curriculum of the Cefedem to integrate traditional music of the world and today's amplified music, alongside with jazz and classical music. It's still quite rare. I think that there are poles of higher education in France where these kinds of music are supposedly taught, but the reality - because we're also talking about a mixed audience - is that these schools, on reflection, don't really want us to come to them. Well, there is something very paradoxical: I think that the poles of higher education are encouraged by the Ministry of Culture to open up to these aesthetics - I think that some of them want also to go in that direction - but at the same time, by the very fact of the institution and how it is organized, there is paradoxically also a rejection of the publics they would like to reach. I don't know if it's very clear: they would like to invite new publics, but by the very structure of these places, they reject them at the same time. For example, you have to know how to read a score or pass all the types of written exams they imposed, things like that. How do you work on that with a DJ or with someone who does electronic music, etc.? So, I say that because we are in the middle of a reflection to change the curriculum of preparatory courses towards higher education and all that. So, we are always in complexities which for me, after a long reflection, are inherent to the very structuring of these places of teaching which lock themselves in ways of doing, which in fact exclude aesthetics, and notably these so-called today's amplified music [Musiques actuelles amplifiées]. When I say "today's amplified music", I am talking about all rock music in the broadest sense, hip-hop movements, which also include dance and all that - in fact it would be nice to discuss dance as well - and electronic music. And the reality is more or less the same, I think, for traditional music, I would say extra-European music to be more precise. That's it. [silence] I don't know if there are other thoughts?

Jean-Charles : In the development of Cefedem, we were led to completely rethink the notion of curriculum. And this seems to me to be something very important in two particular aspects. Firstly, the problem of today’s diversity of artistic expressions and their inclusion in an institution. It should be noted that in most institutions, there is generally today a diversity of practices present, but with a very strong tendency to compartmentalize these practices, preventing any circulation between them, each one staying in its own particular corner. So, the logic number one is: how can we, on the one hand, recognize the various forms of diversity as such, to respect all aspects of each practice - we take up what Gilles said about not imposing written music on oral music, written practices on oral practices and vice versa - and on the other hand, how can we ensure that all the forms of music really meet in an effective way and also work together more. That's the first aspect. The second aspect has to do with the difficulty of higher education today of dealing with the diversity of issues: how to open education to the diversity of the world. There is a tendency in higher conservatories and universities, to face that diversity, to multiply the courses, to pile them up. And the result is that we are rather in the presence of an intellectual tourism on the part of the students, rather than a deeper visit of this diversity. So, how can we find ways to avoid intellectual tourism and still face the diversity of the world? We must probably give up the idea that all people should have access to all the diversity of the world. These seem to me to be the two main difficulties. At the Cefedem, we decided on the presence of all students in a completely common curriculum without choice of path, but at the same time centering very strongly the program on student’s pedagogical and musical projects, putting the emphasis on what individuals wanted to do, obliging the students to go towards diversity, but letting them choose what diversity they wanted to visit.

Samuel (the interviewer) : In this first part on the relationship between PaaLabRes and higher artistic education institutions, as you are also interviewed as PaaLabRes and at the same time, you are also individuals who have this whole career path, and in particular linked to Cefedem. Would PaaLabRes have been able to exist without your participation in the Cefedem, but we can also talk about the Villeurbanne Ecole Nationale de Musique? The question arises about the ways of doing things that you have developed in higher education and that you have been able to develop as an artist within PaaLabRes. And therefore, the question also arises of identifying logics that could be transferred from the world of higher education to the artistic world, to put it differently.

Pascal : I want to say one thing about this. In fact, the Villeurbanne school was created in 1980. And it was one of the first schools that could have a display of all possible aesthetics, that is to say traditional music or jazz or rock or classical music, or computer music or circus. There were even street arts at the beginning in this school. And in fact, when Cefedem started its new curriculum (2000) it was a great opportunity for us in the region, since we in Villeurbanne were already a model of diversity, even if I agree with Jean-Charles that all these categories did not necessarily communicate with each other. That's for sure. And I think that Cefedem was able to show that all these students in various musical genres were able to do things together. And that is really something that, for us, has really helped us afterwards in the school to try to continue that, even if it is not always easy to do it. And we would like to do it more. But as PaaLabRes, I don't have the impression that we are really visible in institutions like the CNSMD or in higher education institutions. I have the impression that we are not very visible. And I would like us to be more visible so that our work can eventually contribute to the discussions, so that these higher education conservatories can evolve a little more in the direction of diversity.

Nicolas : I would like to add one more thing. Obviously, our participation in PaaLabRes is fed by everything we went through before, but I remember some instances of a kind of conjunction of reflections: a) a summer seminar at Cefedem in which the question of the existence of a research laboratory on what we were doing had been raised at one point, and then finally not decided or not initiated; b) the moment when we made a long trip with Gilles in the car to go and play in Montpellier, if I remember correctly, in which this question of the existence of research and therefore of a laboratory that would allow us to bring it to life came up; and c) a discussion with Jean-Charles afterwards. Practically in the same month, there was this conjunction coming from several places, about the possibility of creating a research laboratory in order to bring about words, actions, documentation, reflection and sharing of reflection, etc. And this is what led to the existence of PaaLabRes after some writing work on an initial text. And I wanted to add also that it seems to me that the relationships in any case of PaaLabRes are extremely strong with some small places. PaaLabRes is rather a minority practice and has relationships with minority places. For example, we discuss PaaLabRes a lot in a laboratory of Educational Sciences in Paris 8 University, because I am there and what we do interests these people a lot. But obviously it is still not very visible! I can testify to this because I am the one who brings PaaLabRes when I go to these types of meeting. But there are a lot of agreements in principle, even in fact on the ways of doing research that are not linked to musical practices, for example. All the points that Jean-Charles evoked in PaaLabRes, which tries to bring together this and that, are elements of conflict in many places that are more in the majority, so those which generate more opinions on them, those which produce more publications, those which have more visibility and all that. But at the same time, we have relationships with centers of higher learning. outside references to "art", with a lot of things to be developed. I rather talk about Educational Sciences because my thesis work is in this domain. So, it's in those places that I bring a lot of elements that PaaLabRes develops and that PaaLabRes has allowed me to develop myself. At the same time, I can't really distinguish PaaLabRes from my practice at the Cefedem and from my militant practice. Today, there is a movement going on of the occupation of cultural places with quite a lot of demands for their future and for a development of cultural policies. So we have a fanfare in which we have more than a hundred people on the mailing list, and for the moment, we are doing rehearsals with 40 or 50. And of course, I'm taking part with all that PaaLabRes has brought me and I'm trying to write a diary of these rehearsals, because it's really extremely interesting the way we try to make a self-managed band with more than 50 or 60 people, with not always the same people present at the same time. And in fact, it's a kind of continuous feeding that allows that to happen. In any case, PaaLabRes' relationships with higher education are sometimes stronger with domains that don't discuss artistic or musical practices. It's a kind of weird thing, but it says a certain number of things about the artistic and musical milieu, at least in France. I will also finish on the international relations. Perhaps we fantasize about them a little, but there is a lot of literature in English which interests us enormously, and part of the work of PaaLabRes was to translate a certain number of texts that we found extremely interesting. And so, perhaps we fantasize a little, or I fantasize a little, about how to think about higher education in the arts on the other side of the Atlantic.

Samuel (the interviewer) : Very good.

Jean-Charles : It should be noted that recently the 3 hours video of the third edition of PaaLabRes “Break Down the Walls” was shown in a seminar lead by Vlatko Kucan on improvisation at the Hamburg Musikhochschule in Germany. There are strong links between PaaLabRes editions and a similar experimental publication in the United States “Open Space Magazine”, edited by Ben Boretz. With Nicolas, we have participated to several seminars on the arts at Paris I University, Orpheus Institute in Ghent (Belgium), Exploratorium Berlin, and Côte d’Azur University. And with Gilles we have participated to the last annual meeting of CEPI (Centre Européen Pour l’Improvisation). So, we are not completely cut from artistic discussions on an international basis.

Gilles : I would like to remind you of one small detail, which is that we are completely independent, that we do not receive any funding. So, all this is done in a completely voluntary way by everyone. This may not seem very important, but it also contributes to the fact that there are ups and downs. The involvement must be very strong to hold this kind of project. Generally, the project is well supported by the collective, but there are two people who are a little more committed than the others in there, it is Jean-Charles and Nicolas certainly. But I think that we all participate in it, it is something that we hold dear. I think that when each one of us makes interventions on the right or on the left, on various courses, or at the CNSMD, or things like that, we quote PaaLabres [www.paalagres.org] so it's a link that people will be able to go and see. And I think that PaaLabRes was also an opportunity to create a link, a connection between networks, I don't know if the term is right, in any case according to the each one’s acquaintances. This means that within PaaLabRes we can cross the views of people with whom we have worked, in particular in connection with artistic practices. And we realize that most of the musicians we know - we have also worked with choreographers and so on - are also involved in the question of the transmission. And that through discussions and interviews, all this intersects, and we realize that there are many questions which are common and which cross in particular the aesthetics or even the various arts, dance, theater, painting. Through PaaLabRes, I remember the work we did at Ramdam [a cultural center near Lyon] where we worked with dancers, a painter and musicians. We looked for ways to work together and it raised a lot of questions. And thus, we don't have all the answers, but it has allowed us to trigger meetings and reflections and it has connected people who continue to say to each other: "if we have things to say, we can go and discuss this with PaaLabRes". So, it's a place of connection too and it will become more so little by little, because we are starting to settle in the long term with the third edition, maybe a place of reference for people who will want to look for information. But it is a huge job, a considerable one. It's not easy to keep it up over time.

Samuel (the interviewer) : We will go on… Yes Jean-Charles ?

Jean-Charles : Just to say that I have a few students every year from Cefedem as a support for writing their dissertations. And it is obvious that PaaLabRes and its three editions are a fundamental reservoir for these young people.

Samuel (the interviewer) : Thank you. We're going to move on to maybe the second bubble of this interview. Maybe just to finish on this first bubble about the relationship between PaaLabRes in higher education institutions. It seems to me that, in particular, this is what Gilles was saying about the fact that PaaLabRes is an association but does not have specific funding. One could say that from a reflexive point of view as well as from a logistical point of view, it also relies on Cefedem and the Villeurbanne ENM - but not only, I think of Paris 8 University -, on institutions of higher education which also allow PaaLabRes to exist. And in return, maybe all this might not exist in the strict sense in these different institutions, but in return they allow PaaLabRes to exist and to feed, as you just said Jean-Charles, these institutions in any case. The second big bubble of this interview is about the role and the impact of art. And, in particular, the first question would be: from your point of view, from the point of view of PaaLabRes, today, what role do you think artists, art and creative work play in our society? A bit of a general question. I'll leave the floor to you.

Gilles : I can propose some thoughts. More and more, at least at Villeurbanne, what I have noticed over the last few years, is that more and more young people want to be involved in artistic practices. This is an evidence. So, perhaps this come also with a kind of dream and with the current context in addition - perhaps this will change somewhat the things - but there is a kind of desire to try something else, saying to oneself: "I want to have some pleasure in my life". It's a bit simplistic, I understand that, but it's true that I feel it very strongly, this desire to find meaning. The idea that is often expressed by people who want to enter these studies is that they want to give meaning to their lives through an artistic practice. I don't know if that answers the question, but in any case, I feel that there is a rather strong demand, with dreams behind, which are sometimes bad expectations, mistakes, or a belief in a kind of thing in which one thinks that it will be simpler, it will be easier (etc.), but this is completely false. But in any case, I feel it very strongly. So, it's a way of answering the question by saying: I think that there is a desire for art on the part of many people, in any case of the young or not so young.

Pascal : Yes, I'm going to continue with that. That is to say that I also feel that students have a desire to go their own way and to get out of the formatting established by the Ministry or by the curricula. We can observe this formatting of excellence in the diffusion milieu as well. As an example, I noted an excerpt from the text of the Ministry of Culture's website, "to multiply the cultural offer of excellence". That is to say, there is upfront this notion of excellence that must be a kind of label. And so, it excludes a whole part of the personal pathway, of searching, of trial and error and all that. And I have the impression that our students, today, want to be on their own personal path, to create their own path. And I think that there is a desire to break out of the molds they are in.

Nicolas : To also add the fact that behind the question, there is this kind of thing that we call "art" or thing that we call "the artist", it was very present in the questionnaire too. I find it interesting that PaaLabRes, in any case, works on the artistic practices in act in addition, [Paa = Pratiques artistiques en acte]. It's this double term that insists on the fact that art doesn't exist in itself, but is made, constructed, experimented with, and in general with several people, or most of the time, in any case, with several people on a large chain of events, even the painter in his little atelier is perhaps not alone for that long. And behind the question, there is also a kind of very strong undertone or implicit assumption that art or creative work or artists (etc.), would do some "good" to society. It's great that there's art. It would be great if there were artists, etc. And that there is also a kind of critical vigilance - I don't know if it should be called that - on a certain number of possible drifts (and drifts that are already in place) of this excellence that excludes people, that disqualifies people in fact, the fact that you can't call yourself a musician without having studied at a music school. I always use the example of the Creole reggae band from Reunion Island that I play with. It took me two years to get them to agree to call themselves musicians. They played reggae, that was all. They couldn't call themselves musicians, because only one of them had been to school (meaning a music school), and not for very long. Not for very long, because he left after three months! And so, that excluded them from calling themselves musicians. On the other hand, they played reggae, they were quite... they had a long and extensive knowledge of this music (etc.), but they didn't consider themselves musicians. We would have two rehearsals a week, two concerts a month, but they were not musicians. So, this kind of thing is really... with forms of boxes like "you are in, or you are out". The orchestra was built with capitalist industrialization (etc.) with terms that resembled the military. So how do we manage to play with it, to divert it, especially in orchestras that try to be self-managed? There are forms of entertainment or detour of attention. We can choose what we talk about and the issues we need to discuss. And art also participates in a form of anesthesia, of sterilization of a certain number of questions - well can participate in that - and there is somehow a form of critical vigilance that needs to be developed. The dimensions of research or of reflexive hindsight on the practice by the practitioners themselves seem to me to be an essential element to do this. So, the sort of underlying notion of art, of the benefits of art, makes invisible a certain number of things on which one must be relatively careful, well in the positive sense of the term. My words may sound very critical, but they are meant to be rather constructive. At least I try!

Samuel (the interviewer) : So maybe we could rephrase the question. Rather than saying "what impact does art or artists have?", it would be to say, "what social impact can types of artistic practices have?" Since that's the term that PaaLabRes uses rather than "art", as you said, Nicolas. Can we rephrase the question like that so that eventually you can give an answer?

Gilles : You could say that in this day and age, the government defines that as non-essential practices. So, it's kind of funny to hear that and to see that the reality is completely opposite in my opinion. We are well aware that actual meetings and practices are vital, that they are certainly the most missing in this period. I don't know if we should relate this to the period we are living, but we feel that we have been asked to teach music at a distance, we have been asked to do... well, to do what is impossible! It’s a piece of band-aid that you put somewhere, it's manageable for five minutes. What seems dangerous to me is that more and more people are saying: "you see, teleworking is possible", but I don't see how it can last. Even if indeed on a future projection, all the new digital tools propose new directions and moreover propose new practices too, so there is that which lays out, I think, of the domain of the art schools. What's happening is interesting, because it's going in so many directions that now the tools are very varied, and so there are people who invent their own practice without needing any school, diplomas, and all that. But we also feel that when teaching institutions propose places of practice that make sense for those who are looking for knowledge, it works. So, in fact, this means that digital technology cannot be a sufficient solution to everything. There is a need for a human relationship, for testing in "real life".

Jean-Charles : It's obvious to me that people who are around artistic practices think that their activity is essential. I'm not sure that the majority of people think it's essential, but of course it's something that must be measured. In any case, what seems obvious to me is that the emphasis that we want to put on artistic practices changes the definition of art. The problem with the questionnaire that we were given is that when it is mentioned the term "art", nobody knows what it is. There are 2 million conceptions of what art is. Each one can decide what is art, from Duchamp to I don't know who, to Beethoven! And so, by putting the accent on the practices, we are really interested in the very fabrication of art, how it is done, with whom, under what conditions. And in this sense, for example, the notion of democracy becomes completely different from that which was given by the debates which took place in the Sixties and Eighties, between Malraux and Jack Lang, which were centered with Malraux on the contemplation of the works, the access of the general public to the contemplation of the art works, and perhaps with Jack Lang the access of the general public to a diversity, the acknowledgement of the diversity of artistic practices. And by emphasizing the democratization of the practices themselves, one questions in particular several notions which are not questioned precisely, that is to say the extraordinary hegemony of the scene over any other activity - the presentation of art on stage or in museums for other artistic forms - at the expense of the practices themselves. And by putting the accent on that which is happening on stage, we have something of the order of "the end justifies the means" and therefore we are not going to look at what is happening before. And even within this framework, many people don't mind that the practices can sometimes resemble, as Nicolas said, "military" forms of practice. So as soon as we ask the question of the democratization of the practices themselves, the notion of excellence also takes a hit because if we want to make people participate in a more egalitarian and horizontal way, we run the strong risk of not reaching the great virtuosity that we can observe in the art of the 19th century, for example, in the European high art of the 19th century.

Samuel (the interviewer) : Gilles, you will soon be leaving. Before you leave, would you have anything to tell us about the general trends or the most influential evolutions that you see at work in society, economy, or the arts?

Gilles : Perhaps an anecdote: I animate a course on culture, a forum on culture with the Villeurbanne students. It was Louis Chretiennot who set up this, the one who created the rock department in Villeurbanne. So, the principle is that we go around the table and the students propose subjects they want to talk about or listen to. And within the framework of a listening, there was a student in this case, Fanny who said: “I propose a listening”. She made us listen to a piece and she didn't say anything. There, it was metal, it was very speedy and very virtuoso - to say this complexity of the virtuosity, it is recurrent and at the same time, there are certain styles, notably the Progressive Math Rock, there it becomes completely almost unplayable! And in fact, there was a discussion about metal and what is metal. And it was amazing because there are periods of musical styles that appear, and by listening to records, we can say: "this is from 1990, this is 2000, 2010". So effectively, we made the test, and we manage just by listening to the mix of the thing, by the means of the sound, to recalculate that in times. And more and more, there are mixes even in metal, with the most recent bands, there are jaw harps, there are sounds that come from elsewhere, there are even concrete sounds, and then there is electronic music. So, in fact, it's funny because there are styles that stay a little bit frozen in one place - I'm talking about metal, but I think it's the same thing in a lot of music - and others that will mix more and more, but these mixes are constructive, it's not stuff where everything gets dull. So, things continue to evolve. I think that the good thing about this music, which is also the music in the making, in perpetual construction, is that we are not in a repertoire, it is always things that are evolving, but that will be fed by many things. It doesn’t come from nowhere. And we still don't know what tomorrow’s new musical style will be. And that's what's exciting about artistic education, that is to say, you can't freeze a teaching because you don't know what's going to happen next. We can be nourished by the past, but, first of all, artistic education is complex, because finally, what do we propose to a student? It is emancipation. That means that at the end of a training, the student will no longer need a teacher, in fact, he or she will be able to manage on their own. In fact, we teach them to train themselves to not need us anymore. We can perhaps say it in another way, but there is also that, it is to teach them not to listen to the rules. Finally, it is all that which is complicated in the artistic teaching, it seems to me, but it is that which is enthralling also. We can't freeze things by saying: "this will be it" because tomorrow, it could be something else. And here we see that there is a growing interaction between image and music. The image is full of aesthetics so that also changes the game. In the practices of today's amplified music, whatever the aesthetics in the broad sense, it is all the time linked to the image. In fact, even today, if we launch music without talking about the image, we are already missing something, it seems to me. I'm sorry, I must go, but I would have gladly continued this discussion!

Samuel (the interviewer) : Thank you Gilles.

Gilles : You are welcome! See you later.

Samuel (the interviewer) : See you.

Pascal : I would like to add something. I feel that in the public, well at least in the public of the music schools, we do not have students coming from low-income families. We have a public with already a more or less high income. And I think that there is only one way to make sure that everyone can participate in something cultural, and that is to reach the general education schools from the beginning. And I would just like to talk about a project that we have with two colleagues, Philippe Genet and Gérald Venturi, and a sociologist, Jean-Paul Filliod, with whom we go to a primary school to simply make them build instruments. We try not to give them instruments as in a school orchestra to already inscribe them in a mold. So, we make instruments, we listen to sounds, we record sounds, and little by little, these children acquire a culture of sound, of what is a sound. And at the same time, they write poetry and all that, it mixes and it's not just focused on one class, but on the kids who, for example, are going to produce small cells, who are going to demonstrate them to other classes and who are going to teach them how to do it. And it's the kids who are going to show them how to build small cells and so on. It's spreading throughout the school and poetry will be added to it. And I have the impression that it is by this means that we will be able to make people make their own music. We really refused a school orchestra like we see everywhere, namely, cramming a piece during all the year, to make a blues in one year, we did not want that. We wanted these kids to be able to manipulate everything and have a culture of sound in this school. And I say this in relation to the fact that trial and error and experimentation have never been valued in our lives as musicians. What is valued? In fact, it's a finished product. Finished products, excellence, will be subsidized. The things that are going to be funded are always the things that are at the top of the pyramid, whereas valuing experimentation, in the end, would be the best thing to do in all schools.

Jean-Charles : It should be noted that in the third edition of PaaLabRes, “Break Down the Walls”, there are several examples of this research project lead by Pascal, Philippe and Gérald.

Nicolas : We have always tried, in any case in each of the editions, depending on the entries we had for the theme of the edition, to put at equal level - well I cannot define "level" and it would be necessary to define "equality", so these are not the right terms - productions of professionals in their professional context, therefore with a form of excellence, productions of professionals in uncomfortable contexts, students productions, fragile productions, rather experimental stuff, etc. And that we tried to have, each time in any case, a form of putting forward these experiments, this trial and error, etc.

Samuel (the interviewer) : As artist-musicians - and not only in fact, we can see that each time, you also link it to a process of "making it happen" by others - is this challenge, to involve the people who make it happen, for you the one that should be taken up in the future, to imagine a general trend or an evolution that would allow you to bring things from a social or even economic point of view?

Jean-Charles : All this shows that it is this question of the participation of the greatest number of people in musical practices which is at stake, it seems to me, and which is facilitated in a way by the use of "Low-Tech" technologies, because access to these practices becomes much easier, so to speak. And the techniques of amplification and recording, for example, make it much easier to fabricate sounds. So, the emphasis will be both on participation, but also on the making of sounds in this context, the ability of everyone to be able to create their own sound. And thus produce their own music.

Pascal : I agree with what you say, Jean-Charles. And I would like to give another example of what could get people to work on this: there is a French teacher in a high school who contacted me the other day, because they are working on a novel. It turns out that this novel is about the clarinet, through a whole period from the 1930's to nowadays, and therefore through jazz and all that - that's why we met. So, I work with this class, punctually. These people are used to writing texts, and these are students who like to write, so the goal is to say to them: "Here, we're going to use your writings and you're also going to make music with that". So, these students who never made music will finally be able to create, and in a week, we will all meet for four hours to manipulate sound objects along with their own writing. And I have the impression that in our music schools, which are a bit like sanctuaries, where only a few people come from the whole population of Villeurbanne, even if we have beginners who are from Villeurbanne. In fact, we have very few students from popular culture who will stay with us for very long. We really only have a very small public like that, and we have to seek them out, not necessarily so that they come to the music school, but it's up to us to free up hours to do projects with all these kids. And I know that next year, I will free up an hour for elementary schools, an hour for high schools to do projects that are not necessarily year-long, but punctually to be able to tell them that it is easy to fabricate sound material. We can all do it. And afterwards, we must find formal protocols to allow them to enter all this. Frankly, it's quite exciting and enthralling. Here, I wanted to point that out.

Samuel (the interviewer) : And so, in relation to this example that you have just given as a teacher in a non-higher education structure, what role can institutions of higher education in the arts play in relation to these challenges, trends or evolutions that you are advocating?

Pascal : We're in the process of developing a new educational project, so we're going to try to get more and more people to reach out outside the school. But I imagine that it could be as well at the level of the cinema or at the level of contemporary art or poetry, which have plenty of encounters that make it possible for people to work all together on specific projects, that make it open the minds a little bit and that, I don't know, that it breathes and that we are not in formatting. I think that a music school is not necessarily the only place where you can make music. There are so many different ways to make music in a city. In the city of Villeurbanne, you can do it in many different ways. It's not just the school that can be the place to do things. Some people won't come there. There are many who will never come to this music school. So, you must find other ways. These are sanctuaries so not everyone will come.

Nicolas : I think that there is a question for me around the participation of the greatest number of people making music. I find that it is in connection with a form of precariousness also of the whole of the professions and in particular of the professions of the relation and of human beings who work with other human beings. And it seems to me that this precarization leads to the extinction of many forms of practice because of the fatigue of having to do it or of having to rely on other types of income to be able to continue to do what we like. So, for example, the hour you're talking about, Pascal, is one-sixteenth of your time, but it's still a rather infinitesimal quantity that you manage to tinker with and that you manage to bring out and that you manage to...

Pascal : Yes, but if a hundred teachers free up one hour a week, that's a lot of hours in a year!

Nicolas : Yes, absolutely. For me, any school - and in particular a higher education art center - should be responsible for a form of ecology of practices and for the existence of a diversity of practices, so that the students, when they leave that school, can really choose their own artistic practices, their own ways of doing things. Not the discipline "music" or "music with circus" or "music with circus in this way", but the way of doing, the way of experimenting, the way of fabricating. And so, to open them to seek knowledge, to make them experiment in a "secure", comfortable framework in which one can fail - it is even welcome to fail, because it often allows to reflect. And so, a higher education art center should have a kind of charter for safeguarding the ecology of practices. And it seems to me that these things that are done on the periphery, that never reinterrogate the center, are more and more in danger. The kind of things that, in fact, you can do as long as you have enough energy, but that after a while, sleeping two hours a night, it is not viable. And so, there is a need to have a kind of vigilance to the forms of precariousness of all that makes a human group hold together, so I speak from the musical perspectives, but it seems to me that it is much broader than just musical practices.

Samuel (the interviewer) : OK.

Jean-Charles : Simply to note that this was one of the concerns we had at the Cefedem just before my retirement. It was very clear that the future of this institution meant that we should not only concentrate on teaching, which is necessarily extremely institutionalized, but that we should strongly expand to something that we called mediation in the perspectives of Antoine Hennion. And proposals were made a little after I left going in this direction, which were completely rejected by the Ministry of Culture, and especially by the musical milieu, represented in this process by the musicians' unions. This seems to me to be something quite serious in the context of our society because there is a real need for this training of musicians in this idea of mediation, and obviously this goes hand in hand with what you were saying, Nicolas. There is the need for this to be perpetuated in jobs that are recognized as being of public utility and remunerated in the public sector.

Nicolas : Absolutely!

Samuel (the interviewer) : Let's go back to the question of mediation that you raise here, you have in fact specified it in the sense of Antoine Hennion. Because it seems to me that there is a basic trend in higher education to talk about mediation. There are quite a number of masters on the question of cultural and artistic mediation - there should be a distinction between the two. Could you give a definition, or rather a practice rather than a definition, a practice of this mediation, or possible practices of this mediation that would be necessary to develop? Because it seems to me that a part of the mediation such as it is defined, notably in certain masters, operates of a kind of backward step or rather of a crystallization of what you mentioned Jean-Charles earlier: on the one hand the vision of Malraux, the mediation is towards works of art, therefore consequently, we manage so that people could have access to them, thus we make a mediation towards these works. And on the other hand, perhaps what was also the Lang years, that is to say also a sacralization of the artists - even if you did not say it like that - and that consequently only artists can make the mediation. The mediation thus defined is centered at the same time on works and on artists, and thus on finished products, to say that differently, to return also on what Pascal said. So, without talking about a definition, but here we are, how do we project ourselves into practices that are perhaps a little more explicit?

Jean-Charles : Under the notion of mediation, we could regroup a certain number of activities: teaching art, accompaniment of practices, helping amateur groups, reaching out new public, etc. On this, Pascal gave some very important elements. It should be stressed that, concerning what you said, what the ministry created (at the same time with Malraux and with Jack Lang) was a whole administration, cultural administrators. When the Socialists arrived at the Rhône-Alpes Region, they doubled the budget of culture. But what did that mean? It created a whole system of cultural administration, and therefore it is not surprising that mediation is considered from the point of view of these people who administer the cultural policy of our country. What is absolutely necessary is that it is the musicians themselves who are the mediators in practices that involve, as we said, in an experimental way, different publics, to give them access to musical practices and to the very extended experiments that Pascal was talking about a minute ago, for example.

Samuel (the interviewer) : And how would that translate into a projection, since one of the challenges of this Fast 45 work is to project it onto the schools of higher education? So how could this be translated? Maybe in certain mechanisms, certain agencies? How is the point of view that you have developed and that also takes place in certain schools, but which are not in higher education? How can we imagine, in the long run, a projection in programs and curricula at the level of higher education?

Pascal : I have the impression that whether in higher education schools, Cefedem or even film or art schools, it is simply that the students in their curriculum go towards new publics and that they also go to reach out to... In my opinion, it is towards the primary school classes that it is necessary to go, and middle and high schools. So, that there is really a need for a reflection to take place on the part of these higher education institutions to ensure that it is included in the curricula to really work in these places. Finally, that it is obvious to share all this with French teachers, history teachers, all teachers. There are many people who want to participate in this discussion, this reflection. I think that this can be one of the first leads.

Jean-Charles : I know a lot of experiments taking place outside of France. For example, Peter Renshaw in London in his action with the project “Connect” and there is Lucy Green in England who does a lot of experiments in this direction. And you can find this kind of projects everywhere in Europe. In France, despite the creation of the CFMI [Centre de Formaion des Musiciens Intervenants], and the recognition of “musicians in residence in primary schools”, we are still very conservative in the institutions, it seems to me, in the institutions of musical practice. Perhaps less so in the universities.

Nicolas : It seems to me that it is one of the interests to develop, in any case, or to develop what we call - Samuel (the interviewer) said it earlier - the “making people do”, that is to say to put the students, if we speak about higher education, in the framework of making others do something. So, this can take place in schools as well as in many other places. And for that, there is a minimum of vigilance, in any case, it seems to me, to learn to situate one's action somewhere in some context, from the point of view of what the student is capable of doing or wants to do or feels interested in exploring or experimenting. Therefore, to situate oneself. To situate the place of the action. So, if it's in a school, in such and such a place, in such and such a part of the city or such and such a part of the countryside, which since the Revolution has been crossed by different rationalities, etc., then it is a question to situate oneself, to situate one's action and afterwards, to have enough elements or support to carry out a critique. If I take the example of the fanfare I mentioned, it's quite interesting how I see myself taking on roles, and it's just scary in fact. I see myself taking on the role of a musician who is "battle-hardened" on a certain number of things, who would like the product to be more polished than just what is being produced, whereas that is not at all the object, and the whole band agrees that it is best not to work on that, but I feel that I have conditioned reflexes, which were conditioned by my training and the way I was forced to build myself in order to survive in that milieu. So, I have that stuff creeping up. And on the other side, I have worked quite a bit on anarchism and self-management, etc. and the fanfare claims to be self-managed. And again, I have stuff that is coming up from... but in fact, this, this is not at all...

Pascal : For example, tuning the band? [laughs]

Nicolas : No, because I deconstructed that. But the place of the solos or the kind of balance between the jumps, etc., a lot of things. In fact, I feel that it's creeping up and I realize it and I say to myself: “no, in fact that's not the goal!” And I also have a lot of stuff in the form of knowledge that I have built up on self-management that would make me at one point whistle and say: “red card, we have to discuss because there is in fact violence of domination that is exercised and that is just unacceptable”. Except that after a while, if I do it, who am I to say that? Shouldn't this be discussed a little? I have a lot of conditioned reflexes of a person who could be said to know about a certain number of things, but which do not correspond at all to the action that is being set up. And I am able to do this because we have established the principle that when a person conducts a piece, he/she has to remains silent during the rehearsals of all the other pieces. So, at times, I am obliged to shut my mouth and therefore to observe, to have desires, but to say to myself: "no, don't say anything". And therefore, to be able to take a step back on the action that is being done, and this is because I have built tools in my training, in my contacts and especially in PaaLabRes. But this is the result of a long training. And I think that it could go a little faster if we nourished the students with analyses of practices and make them analyze their own practices by themselves, when they are in the process of making something, to analyze what is being played out. This fabrication of a practice, it can vary between the ultra-fascist to ultra-libertarian type with a whole panel which can be very diverse. We need to develop tools, theoretical elements and reflexive feedbacks. Therefore, it should be stressed that we need time. We need time to analyze these things and especially to analyze what doesn't work, because not everything works super well. It's a sort of thing that could be developed a bit more in institutions of higher education in art.

Samuel (the interviewer) : One or two questions to finish. It seems to me that in what was said, there is nevertheless the necessity to consider art as a logic, a rather important social practice. You raised economic, social, human systems of relation between the people who make something, and it seems to me that the fact of posing the art without a big "A" would require to go further, notably in the questions that we submit to you. And now, a reflection on the future, on you, on PaaLabRes. What will PaaLabRes be in 25 years? I mean the PaaLabRes entity. So, maybe not necessarily PaaLabRes - I don't know, we have to see how we can project ourselves - but PaaLabRes or its successors or its successions? What could possibly happen to PaaLabRes that would be for the best?

Pascal : The Cefedem students will take over, right?

Nicolas : In their own way.

Samuel (the interviewer) : Jean-Charles, you spoked, but you had…

Jean-Charles : I don't know. 25 years seems, from my perspective, a bit long! [laughs]

Samuel (the interviewer) : So, what would be the conditions for PaaLabRes to be established, to emerge or to develop? What would be the conditions, and in particular perhaps conditions that would come from higher education institutions, for example? Under what conditions could other PaaLabRes be created?

Jean-Charles: It seems to me that PaaLabRes operations are bound to surge and then die quite easily. Let's say: arise easily and die easily. And so there will be millions of PaaLabRes that will arise, I am absolutely certain of that, but in other circumstances and with other people. And what is obviously the major issue is the institutions. First of all, the fact that there is this loss of confidence in institutions today does not erase the fact that institutions are absolutely necessary. It is obvious that we must build institutions in which things are not imposed from above, but are developed horizontally and that we can accept, in the realm of institutions, a diversity of centers and also the development, in institutions of a diversity of artistic practices and of the notion of artistic research. It is necessary that this reflection takes place and that it can exist in a dynamic way both within the institutions and outside of the institutions in operations such as PaaLabRes. I think that it is complementary.

Nicolas : For me, we need to clarify the term of institutionalization, of the building of institutions, with ups and downs, births and deaths, and that the death of an institution is perhaps not so serious as that if it comes to participate in the ecology or the ecosystem (etc.) of things. There is a form of necessity of constant institutionalization, of always questioning the instituting that comes to reshuffle the cards, to question the instituted, etc. And that, right now, I think that it can be developed, and I don't know on what human scale, but we know how to do it quite well in small groups or small institutions. And as soon as it becomes too large or too numerous, or too much, etc., we are very quickly trapped by the fact that the instituting dynamic is either attenuated or rendered non-existent or only develops at the margin. And so, it's recreating a little something on the side, etc. There are really things to think about in terms of ecological systems or ecosystems - I don't know what the term is for the survival of species and subspecies within species, etc. So, it's not just the institution that's important, it's the institutionalization. It is the process that counts, just as we say that it is the making of music and the making of art that is interesting, it is the making of the institution in a dynamic and living process that is interesting. I find that there are plenty of alternatives, it's swarming everywhere, there are alternatives that are starting to take hold and that are relatively interesting, under many radars. And at the same time, we have monstrous institutions that are hegemonic and hyper-dominant in the sense of eating people and their energy.

Samuel (the interviewer) : And perhaps also to make the link with what Jean-Charles said or what was said a little bit about projections, it is that the "ideas" in quotation marks - for example Jean-Charles, you spoke of horizontality more than verticality, to develop more horizontal logics - it is also things that are recuperated by the institutions in quotation marks, the "big institutions" of which you spoke Nicolas. These “ideas” are also part of their own flagship, and this does not mean at all that they develop a reflection at the level of individuals and that it brings more social happiness, to say that in a somewhat caricatural way! So, in fact, the way in which "horizontality" is made, in quotation marks, or horizontalization, the way in which the logics of mediation are made as they were raised, the way of making music, etc., I have the impression that they are always to be put back on the drawing board in order not to fall into logics only of vocabulary, or even of change at the margin of the practices. Perhaps to conclude, in relation to all the subjects that we have mentioned and always putting this back into a perspective of a projection over several years on notably a type of development that we would like to see in institutions of higher education in the arts, not only in the context of France, but are there things that you would like to add as PaaLabRes, but also as a person?

Pascal : I would just like to say that, as what we are saying here, is addressed to a consortium that also represents to a large extent the visual arts. So, I imagine that in this domain, there must be the same questions as in the field of music, I imagine, because there are also some kind of hegemonic poles that are surely unbearable in this domain too. And so, I can't wait to see the result of all these speeches, well these discussions. I can't wait to see how in the visual arts we can envisage other ways of seeing the future. In any case, thank you for giving us the floor. See you soon!

Samuel (the interviewer) : Jean-Charles, you have something to…

Jean-Charles : No, not really. I think we have said many things.

Samuel (the interviewer) : Very good. Nicolas ?

Nicolas : Yes, I will try to formalize what we were getting at. What I’m going to say concerns the role of everyone, but perhaps more specifically, concerns the institutions of higher education in the arts and in particular in the context of the musical practices that are the place in which PaaLabRes works. It seems to me that there is an absolute necessity to become aware of the hegemonic forms of domination, etc. and of the violence that they give rise to, and therefore to construct critiques of these systems, this constitutes a kind of first stage. The second stage, in view of that, is to try to build alternatives. And I think that PaaLabRes, for example, is one of the alternatives in view of a certain number of things that we have been able to identify in the world of musical practices and the way in which research was carried out. So, building alternatives is the second stage. And the third is to criticize these same alternatives with regard to all the criticisms that we had already made of the current system and others, because obviously, the alternatives that we construct are imperfect, etc. There is a sort of three-step system: to continue to criticize, to construct alternatives and even to criticize these alternatives. So, we do it a little bit in PaaLabRes, it's not very visible, because we see all the lacks, all the things, all the people who are not given the floor, the people for whom it's difficult to go and get interviews, even though they might have developed very interesting experiences. We can't do it, because we don't have the time, but at the same time if we don't have the time, it's because we didn't take the time. Finally, there are quite interesting things, if we take the institutions of higher education of the arts, they should be obligated to make a criticism of the current world, to make people build alternatives and to build themselves alternatives that the students experience, alternatives that he students themselves build, alternatives of the future world they contribute to create. In this way, they would participate in the invention of the world in the process of being made and to equip themselves (ourselves too) on the criticism of these same alternatives so that they do not end up reproducing the thing. It seemed to me that we had already reached this point earlier, these three stages: critique, alternative and critique of alternatives, which is a kind of virtuous circle.

Samuel (the interviewer) : Thank you Nicolas for these concluding words and thanks to Pascal, Jean-Charles and Gilles.