Mostly known for his experimentations with ‘maladjusted’ individuals and autistic children, and for his influence on the revolutions in post-war psychiatry, Fernand Deligny was neither director nor scriptwriter, certainly not a historian of cinema; his writings do not constitute a theory of the image. Nonetheless, cinema is constantly called into his practice, and images can be regarded as one of the main sources of his conceptual reflection. Deligny’s experimentations take form also through and within cinema; he elaborates on the image to reflect on autistic perception and memory and to radicalize his critique of humanism and discursive language.
In the 1955 manifesto ‘The Camera, a Pedagogical Tool’, Deligny emphasizes that the camera is a ‘dispositif’ (apparatus) mediating collective relationships. Later he uses the neologism ‘camering’: ‘I maintain that camering doesn’t come to an end and it’s perhaps here that it differs from filming’. He favours the tool over the finished object (the film) a non-subjective and endless action, cinema as process.

In his social, pedagogical, and clinical experimentations, the energy mobilized through the cinematographic practice does not exhaust itself in the effort of creating a film-object. Freed from the need to produce a finished film, it is the ‘film to come’ that is emphasized. The film projects in turn structure Deligny’s experimentations inasmuch as they emancipate them from their supposed aim — that of normalizing psychotic or re-educating deviant subjects.

This workshop proceeds from the idea that tools can establish new forms of mediation between the members of a group, installing a scene and a milieu. The presence of the tool — the camera in first place, even when used ‘without film’ (taking over thus the gesture of the Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov) — prepares and structures modes of action, it installs the milieu ‘there’, wherever it is wielded. Can Deligny’s practice, with all its implications, suggest new forms of social, political, clinical, and pedagogical interventions through mediation that construct or assemble milieus?

In English

Day 1: ‘Camering’

11:00: Introduction by Marlon Miguel
Introduction of the project ‘Madness, Media, Milieus. Reconfiguring the Humanities in Postwar Europe’ by Elena Vogman

12:00 – 13:30 Panel I
Filming in Fernand Deligny’s Network — Archival Material Presentation
Marina Vidal-Naquet and Martin Molina
Respondent: Elena Vogman

13:30-15:00 Lunch break

15:00 – 16:20 Panel II
‘Point of Seeing’
Leon Brenner and Henning Schmidgen
Respondent: Christopher Chamberlin

16:20-17:00 Coffee break

17:00 – 19:00 Atelier:
Cartography in Deligny’s Network — with Sandra Alvarez de Toledo & Janmari’s Manifesto – Screening and Presentation by Florian Fouché
Respondent: Arnd Wedemeyer

19:00-19:30 Break

19:30 Screening: Caroline Deligny’s video images (1978) in the Network, presented by Bruno de Coninck, Lou Vercelletto and Lo Thivolle

Day 2: Media, Milieu, Mediation

11:00 – 12:20 Panel III
Media and Milieus in Clinical Contexts
Elena Vogman and Catherine Perret
Respondent: Iracema Dulley

12:20-14:30 Lunch break

14:30 – 16:30 Panel IV
Cinematographic Assemblages
Arianna Lodeserto, Lucas Maia & Francesco Restuccia, Mathias Schönher
Respondent: Blandine Joret

16:30 -17:00 Coffee break

17:00 – 18:20 Panel V
‘Montage of Life’
Hervé Joubert-Laurencin and Blandine Joret
Respondent: Martin Molina

18:20 -19:30 Coffee break

19:30 Artist Talk and Screening:  ‘Balayer — A Map of Sweeping’
Imogen Stidworthy
Respondent: Marlon Miguel

With

Sandra Alvarez de Toledo
Leon Brenner
Bruno de Coninck
Florian Fouché
Blandine Joret
Hervé Joubert-Laurencin
Arianna Lodeserto
Lucas Maia
Martin Molina
Catherine Perret
Francesco Restuccia
Henning Schmidgen
Mathias Schönher
Imogen Stidworthy
Lo Thivolle
Lou Vercelletto
Marina Vidal-Naquet
Elena Vogman

Organized by

Marlon Miguel

An ICI Berlin Event in cooperation with the projects ‘La tentative Deligny’ (EUR ArTec) and ‘Madness, Media, Milieus. Reconfiguring the Humanities in Postwar Europe’ (Volkswagen Stiftung/ Bauhaus-Universität Weimar)

Excerpts from Caroline Deligny’s archival material. Images shot between 1977 and 1980 in Monoblet – BDC all rights reserved

KV Assembling Milieus