This event offers to explore the areas of friction between the marvelous and the scientific, knowledge and beliefs, through artistic and theoretical practices that question how science can produce the imaginary and wonder forms of knowledge.
Esban, the Higher School of Fine Arts of Nîmes, is a higher education institution and like any good school, it organizes beautiful things. The event will begin on Thursday, April 2 at 5:30 p.m. at the showcase of the museum of old Nîmes for the opening of the exhibition “Nous sommes au moins trente mille dans cette nuit.”
This exhibition, coordinated by artist Sophie Blet, was collectively created by third and fourth year students of Esban. It presents a confrontation between their original creations and a selection of objects from the museum’s collection. The pedagogical and artistic project initiated and supported by Arnaud Vasseux aims to experiment with the possibilities of presenting heritage objects in relation to the present.
The partnership between the two neighboring institutions is part of the rich history of the building, which in 1910 became the multidisciplinary Palais des Beaux-Arts to accommodate both the Conservatory of Music, the School of Fine Arts, and then the museum of Old Nîmes. With Romane Coppens Bioux, Lucie Douillet, Alice Faccani, Charlotte Jonon, Morgane Keraghel, Théa Pirot, Chloé Bourgade, Mariana Guzmán.
On Friday, April 4, a second day of art and research meeting will take place on the theme: Marvelous ~ Scientific: experimental connections. Supported by the pedagogical projects led by Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc and Lila Neutre, this day offers to explore the areas of friction between marvelous and scientific, knowledge and beliefs, through artistic and theoretical practices that question how science can produce the imaginary and wonder forms of knowledge.
Far from any binary opposition between knowledge and superstition, the day invites us to recognize that the marvelous is not the opposite of the scientific, but a possible vector of questioning, a tool for decentering, a driver of discoveries and therefore of research.
As contemporary Western knowledge seems to embody itself in ever more powerful technological devices for measurement, calculation, and visualization, it seems necessary (even urgent) to rethink our relationship to experience, situated knowledge, technologies, and imaginaries.
The works of the invited artists and researchers navigate between observation and divination, analysis and poetry, rationality and magic. Rather than opposing these terms, they envisage alliances, experimental connections that outline new epistemologies and allow us to consider the marvelous as a critical and heuristic tool.
The day revolves around paired exchanges that will discuss singular or collective ways of reading images, bodies, the sky… in other words, the world.
This day is the second of a series of meetings dedicated to research-creation organized at the Higher School of Fine Arts of Nîmes. It is part of the GARDENER program (jointly led by Esban, Nîmes University, and the CHU) which promotes interdisciplinary collaborations between artists, researchers, and partners from the region around the concept of vulnerability and new forms of knowledge production and sharing.
This new event, which will take place in two parts between spring 2026 and 2027, will jointly question reason and enchantment, protocol and magic, art, and research.
Find the full program by clicking here.
