Research and Creation Workshops (ARC)

ARC Artificium
POP goes to Paris

Monika Brugger, Fabrice Caravaca – Camille Vacher and Nicolas Gautron for communication and printed materials.

For the next one JEWELRY TRAIL 2026 in ParisThe jewelry workshops at HEAR Strasbourg and POP Atelier Bijou at Ensad Limoges have joined forces to exhibit student and graduate works created in these two unique spaces within French higher education institutions specializing in art and design. The exhibited "things/objects" from both schools engage in a dialogue and demonstrate the diverse pedagogical approaches possible in art and design schools.
It is necessary for this ARC to engage in the work and practices of an "exhibition curator"; the content of an exhibition must be conceived more as an echo or a spokesperson for the various teachings of
these two schools, and to transcribe/make understand the uniqueness of each school.

Future curators are expected to design an exhibition layout within a space that incorporates the specific constraints of an exhibition venue (public circulation, dialogue between pieces representing the unique styles of the two schools, existing display cases, etc.). They must be able to write and design textual (about the curriculum and the exhibited pieces) and graphic materials for the École Nationale Supérieure d'Art et de Design (ENSAD) in Limoges, and create a more comprehensive document about the students and the pieces since their creation; select the pieces, organize their reception and transportation, etc.; and prepare a budget to understand the financial implications.

Finally, the participants in this adventure must put their skills at the service of a range of stakeholders within their school to share what is being activated in a space where students are working on the question of jewelry. Today, thinking about adornment has become a multifaceted practice that is taking hold of new territories of contemporary thought and creation – aesthetic freedom, the use of current technologies, the use of diverse materials, conceptual and critical attitudes – where new artistic positions and thus new, unexpected forms are emerging.

ARC Chromoculture – Cultivating color through art and design

Flavie Cournil, Cécile Vignau, Clara Guislain, Clara Salomon, Arnaud Dubois (researcher at CNRS)

While synthetic dyes pollute the air and numerous waterways worldwide, this project proposes a collective reflection on environmentally friendly dyeing practices. Launched in 2021 with a reconfiguration of the Dyeing and Silver Light Developing workshops, the heart of the project lies in the grounds of the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD) in Limoges with the "Chromoculture" laboratory garden. Composed of approximately 50 different species of color plants, it was conceived by the artist-botanist. Liliana Motta in collaboration with the students of ARC (design, layout, mulching, planting) and the help of local actors (farmers, associations, local authorities…).

In 2025-2026, the ARC continues through various collective and individual projects that engage students in the conceptualization of personal research around the issues raised by the ARC Chromoculture: current sources of ecological colours, pollution of waterways and air due to the dye industry, pollution due to mining industries, relationship to coloured heritage and geology of the region, botanical research on colour plants, work to document the project in the form of photos, silver film and publications with low environmental footprints.

To support their research, students can participate in various projects: enriching the laboratory garden, workshops (plant-based dyes, phytography), and outings with the textile designer and dyer. Charlotte Marembert and with the ceramicist Stéphanie MarcenatThe program includes meetings with artists, including Emmanuelle Nègre, who is in residence for three years as part of the ARC program, as well as a study trip planned for early 2026 to Provence focusing on geological and plant colors. Two project-based residencies are offered to students in partnership with local organizations (Lainamac and Moulin du Got).
Occasional meetings are also planned with the ARCs The River School et Images & Co to cross common and complementary issues.

In June 2026, the CIAP Vassivière will host the exhibition "So we will find colour elsewhere", born from reflections carried out since 2021 within the framework of the ARC Chromoculture.
Structured around three themes—Situating, Cultivating, and Repairing Color—the exhibition will explore color as a living material, at the crossroads of nature, traditional skills, and contemporary struggles. Rooted in the Limousin region, it will draw upon the traditions of enamels, Limoges ceramics, and Aubusson-Felletin tapestries to examine the connections between rural craft practices and current social, economic, and environmental challenges.
A dedicated room will revisit the Chromoculture project (2021-2026), highlighting the issues
eco-pedagogy and the forms of transmission that have permeated this research-creation program.

ARC Chromoculture was supported for two consecutive years (from 2021 to 2023) by the professionalization system “ CulturePro » from the Ministry of Culture. From 2023 and for the next 3 years, the project is supported by aid from the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region as part of its call for projects “ Promoting student success ».

ARC Images & Co – Mundus est fabula

Delphine Gigoux-Martin, Clara Guislain, François Coadou, Pierre-Emmanuel Meunier

In 1957, the philosopher Henri Lefebvre published an article in the NRF entitled "Towards a Revolutionary Romanticism." His aim was to break with a narrowly scientific conception of revolution, whose failure he saw as blatant, and to reconnect with the powers of the mind and the imagination. Lefebvre had been a regular at the Surrealist circle since 1925, drawing inspiration in part from their work. This same circle would also lead him, in the late 1950s, to cross paths with Guy Debord and the Situationist International. It is to this kind of revolutionary romanticism that we wish to refer here. At a time when the environmental crisis is undeniable for everyone, unless they choose to take refuge in denial, while the sounds of marching boots once again echo around us, and democracy is faltering everywhere, if it hasn't already collapsed, the risk would indeed be great to succumb to despair, to a sense of powerlessness. On the contrary, as a form of resistance and even counter-attack, we must project new ideals: alternative images, narratives, and imaginaries. If the world is a fable (Mundus est fabula), to borrow the words painted by Weenix in 1647 on his portrait of Descartes, then to change the world, we must change the fable: we must change the stories.

The history of art is replete with such attempts, to which we would like to reconnect: from Dada to Fluxus, by way of Surrealism, Pataphysics, and the Situationist International. We will examine each example not only from a strictly historical perspective, to understand them in themselves and within their context, but also from a programmatic perspective.
heuristic: by asking ourselves what is still alive in them, beyond the reproduction of gestures or forms, what they teach us to continue today to doubt, to dream and to create.
Visits to partners – The Foundation of Doubt in Blois, Rochechouart Museum of Contemporary Art, CDLA or FRAC-Artothèque Nouvelle-Aquitaine – will enrich the discussions
through direct confrontation with the works.

ARC The school in fermentation

A group of students with the help of Clorinde Coranotto, Nathanaël Abeille, Clara Guislain, and Jessica Lajard

How can we live together? An age-old question that, in the Anthropocene era and with the rise of the far right, takes on a new urgency. In artistic practices, questions of production, reception, materials, and images often arise; but what happens when we shift our focus and the material becomes us: the collective that learns to create, the collective that acts, the collective that thinks? In turn, and often as a team, each member of ARC leads a project, a transmission, a discovery, in collaboration with guest teachers and other participants. We want to form a group, to become one. We also hope that each art student can become aware, as a human being, of what they already have to share and transmit. Being a member of a group also means changing one's stance, being a listener, a teacher, an organizer; it means giving energy and attention…
We wish to learn about tools for collective decision-making and regulation (tools necessary for artistic life).
and citizen) and broaden the collective to include non-human living beings (an essential broadening in the face of the ecological emergency).
Furthermore, we also reflect on our bodies as matter, in a school where the performing arts are rarely practiced, where can singing, dancing, eating, walking take place? How are the senses the openings to the world around us? Refining them also means expanding the richness of the sensations of our world.

This ARC (Academic Research and Action Center) is punctuated by shared lunches, gardening, workshops, singing, self-defense classes, readings, and a great deal of peer learning. We envision this arc as a space for experimentation, encounters, and openness, nourished by our individualities, knowledge, and desires. We connect with local actors in the region who are working collectively in art, crafts, and agriculture, which also allows us to envision our future in the Limousin region after school.

ARC River School

Vincent Carlier

The title The River School states a double movement:
→ Learning about the river: by activating human knowledge (scientific, artistic, historical, and vernacular) both to build interdisciplinary alliances and to provide knowledge to the various stakeholders capable of developing informed and context-specific actions. It is also a way to increase the potential tools for producing artistic research and experimentation.
→ Learning from the river: stepping outside oneself to learn directly from the river through sensory, hands-on experiences. The river has things to teach us, and this must be done by spending time with it. Our sensory reconnection to the river's various environments is necessary to understand and perceive their constituent balances and the upheavals that threaten them.
These sensory experiences are also a means of building a de-anthropocentric approach necessary for building new relationships with living things and participating in the abolition of the Nature/Culture distinction, the constitution of new ontologies and the development of a new approach to the Commons.

Project The River School develops a river eco-pedagogy program through collaborations between artists, art, design, and geography students, researchers, scientists, citizens, and water managers. This collaborative work will allow for an understanding of the situation of the Vienne River and its watershed, and will produce artistic experiments as tools to contribute to the necessary ecological awareness of the environmental issues facing the river, its tributaries, and the local hydrological balance.
A program of meetings and field experiences will enrich the shared knowledge and the forms produced by the project's participants. The team involved will develop contextual practices that prioritize field observation, immersion, data collection, walking, slow movement, and encounters. The project will utilize various tools for capturing reality (drawing, sound and video recordings, writing, etc.) in order to construct alternative forms of narrative that reflect the ecological dynamics of the Vienne River and the impacts of human activities on its balance.

ARC The Dolphin Painters: Thinking Through Form

Yves Chaudouët, Alain Doret, Ken Peat

The research work consists of defining what thought through form can be, as theorized by Hernest Hans Gombrich, or how painters, in the history of art up to the present day, have put this thought at the service of form.
The motif: the painter needs a motif, a form to trigger the act of painting. There is also another motif within the form – the “motive” – the reason that triggers the “excitement,” that drives the painter to commit the act of removing, animating, or reanimating a form.
Decoding: painting is concrete, very real; we see it, we touch it. Painting creates, and the word "pre-creates," as P. Soulages said. It is at this point that the theoretical research will take place. What the word can translate, what the word can achieve; for this, we will use analogical language, the language of animals—the trope.
The trope: as an association of ideas of an analogical nature, a metaphor occurs, which is the trope par excellence. This is very important because a painting cannot be explained. Thinking through form, in our case, produces paintings. The forms represented by the painter are motifs that produce a communicative effect. Like the cat that meows to ask its owner for milk—which is analogical language—doesn't say, "Milk, milk!" It says, "Dependence, dependency"... it is the factor of necessity, of the animal's need for another animal. Following Gilles Deleuze, and based on Gregory Bateson's thesis, we can call it analogical language—a language based on the non-linguistic senses of things, expressions of emotions, of feelings through which
The painter expresses himself – in a bestial language.
The painter, according to Gilles Deleuze, grafts an entirely pictorial code onto the pictorial material.
Just like dolphins, who had to encode their analogical language. They are painters because of this; they are dolphin-painters.

ARC New gestures

Indiana Collet-Barquero, Fabrice Cotinat, Jessie Derogy, Serge Payen, Arnaud Borde

New Gestures places the gestures of ceramics crafts as "living archives" and sources of study that nourish creative work in connection with immersive, robotic, digital technologies and with generative artificial intelligences in the fields of art and design. This located research program takes as its point of support the territory of Limousin as a living corpus of traditional know-how and innovations related to ceramics and wishes to engage a strong link with the Iberian Peninsula.
Using cross-disciplinary exploratory methods (immersion, experimentation, investigation, collection and archiving) on ​​gesture, the objective is to bring to light processes in the process of transformation that students at Ensad Limoges can reinvest in art and design in a logic of hybridization of practices.
The idea of ​​objectifying a new continuum in the field of production and creation in art and design observes two sides. One develops a documentary content of the gestures of trades, "living archives" for which we constitute a repertoire of gestures, words, events, traces, practices and creation related to the work of ceramics. The other side, with an experimental aim, uses immersive, digital technologies and robotics (3D printing, VR-AR, VR, algorithms, automation, generative artificial intelligence, metaverse) as tools for creation and development from the activation of documentary sources.
This ARC places students in different situations of investigation, encounter and learning.
Expertise related to ceramics: economic and cultural actors, production companies, research projects, etc., in the Limousin region, but also nationally and in Europe. Furthermore, students explore the possibilities for interaction linked to motion capture and artificial intelligence.
generative, these intertwine traditional know-how with cutting-edge digital tools. The expected results with these technologies are directly exploited in the creations of art and design students.
design.
THE ARC New GesturesThis initiative, which unites knowledge production (research) and creative transformation (action) based on the crafts of ceramics, seeks to expand the scope of practices and technical knowledge through new technologies, as well as through the sharing and analysis of individual and collective experience. Thus, the cross-disciplinary methodologies and inter-category collaborations promoted by the ARC (Ceramic Research and Action Center) are key. New Gestures not only allow us to revisit the relationship to knowledge, but also seek to open up other avenues in the ways of "making".

In 2023 and 2024, the ARC Nouvelles gestualités is supported by the professionalization system CulturePro from the Ministry of Culture. In 2024, it will also benefit from an allocation under the title of theCall for projects Research in higher schools of art and design (RADAR).