Conférence invitée à l'ICN Business School de Nancy pour le colloque DYSFUNCTION DAY. Comment le fanzine est venu interférer avec ma carrière de géomorphologue au point d'en faire basculer les orientations. Réflexion sur la dissolution de la science dans l'art et sur les nouvelles modalités de médiation scientifique à travers des pratiques artistiques.
Une installation faite d'un poster de 6 m sur 3 m sert de support visuel à la présentation.
 |
| Sciaphiles, how to capture the shadow of a landscape. |
The presentation is about the influence of a mundane
media, i.e. do-it-yourself fanzine, on the dysfunctional evolution of an
academic earth scientist. It will show how a long-lasting hobby transformed the
rational and objective study of landscapes into the production of abstract
artworks. The first part of the presentation is autobiographic. Samuel
Etienne is also known as Seitoung (and other heteronyms), a zinester since his
14th. Seitoung[i] contributes to or
publishes dozens of DIY fanzines since the 1980’s, most of these publications
being considered a hobby without link with his professional academic career. However,
in 1998, he founded a non-profit association publishing books on popular music
(Editions Melanie Seteun[ii]) where, in 2002, he
co-founded the peer-review Volume! conceived as a “scientific
fanzine on popular music”. This is when the fanzine hobby started to cross the
academic career. This is when the dysfunction begins. This is the sand grain
which, falsifying all sedimentological rules, will steadily grow as big as a
boulder instead of disappearing like silty dust. Gradually caught up with his
double life, Samuel Etienne abandoned his geomorphologist career in 2018 to
dedicate his full research time on fanzines. The symbolic act of burial was the
publication of BOULDERS[iii],
an artzine exploring the use of boulders in contemporary art. The first three
issues were dedicated to his own science leftovers, i.e. scientific material,
namely coastal boulders, collected during his geomorphologist career but never
used or valorised in academic publication. In the meantime, Samuel
Etienne/Seitoung moved from the scientific study of landscapes
(sedimentological archives) to the production of conceptual artworks (from
canvas to objects and artzines) focussing on the memory and overconsumption of
landscapes (“payscaments”[iv]). He also explores the museum
dimension of fanzines through the production of zinewall[v], giant but ephemeral installation
made of photocopies, reprints, collages of forgotten fanzines. Then, his
scientific research outcomes have now moved from classic research papers
towards an artistic production where (earth) science (i.e. an objective
knowledge of the natural space) is formally dissolved into art (i.e. a
subjective representation of the environment).