TRANSGENERATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS AND BRAIN PLASTICITY
Péguy LUMUENE LUSILAVANA has a PhD in Philosophy and a Professional Masters in Publishing-Journalism. He is a teacher-researcher in philosophy (a specialist in Henri Bergson and a member of the Société des Amis de Bergson), working in the fields of cognitive neuroscience, Pragmatics, AI and Information and Communication Sciences. We have already published one of his articles entitled De la clôture à la communication monadique: l’erreur de Leibniz in Plastir 62, 09/2021. In this new contribution, he shares with us his thoughts on the results of sociological research carried out by Thierry Blöss to elucidate the nature of relations between the generations as they relate to social inequalities. This study shows that private family mutual aid is not natural, that it cannot be taken for granted. The public authorities should therefore take responsibility for solidarity between the generations, to rectify the errors in their practice at family level. However, from the author’s point of view, this transition from the private to the public sector requires serious reflection on the foundations of this public assumption of responsibility for solidarity, as the mistreatment of the elderly in EHPADs (Etablissements d’Hébergement pour Personnes Agées Dépendantes) shows that this transition is not a foregone conclusion. These foundations should take advantage of advances in cognitive neuroscience, particularly neuroplasticity and neoteny. These two concepts make it possible to think of the links between generations as transgenerational relationships. This cross-generational approach involves the reciprocal transmission of skills and know-how, which Péguy Lumuène Lusilavana calls technological and ethical co-learning.
JEMONDE, A POETIC AND CIVIC EXPLORATION OF THE ANTHROPOCENE
Maud LOUVRIER-CLERC is an artist, designer and lecturer in sustainable development strategies. Her key themes are identity, imprint and interdependence. The artist has a special bond with the Jura and Brittany and has been immersed in a multicultural environment since childhood. Her work is regularly featured in solo exhibitions, including « Oustide, inside » at the Villa Savoye in 2016, « Climat, la nouvelle Apocalypse? » at the Château d’Angers in 2018, and « Du Ciel à l’Assiette » at the Jardin des Ifs in 2022. Maud Louvrier Clerc also takes part in biennials and group exhibitions, such as the Saint-Etienne International Design Biennial in 2015 with « Les sens du beau », Dubai Design Week in 2018 with « How innovation creates history », and « La Conscience de l’eau » at the Maison de la Norvège in 2022. As part of her research, the visual artist encourages encounters with scientists and entrepreneurs around Art and Science, with the aim of bringing out the possible. JEMONDE is a poetic and socially responsible exploration of the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is the name of our geological era, characterised by the impact of human activities on the Earth. The universal artistic project presented in Plastir is open to all languages and all ages and is part of UNESCO’s « Humanities Art & Society » project. Its aim is to encourage people to live together better and to strengthen their civic commitment to the values of sustainable development.
PHILOSOPHY AND TRANSDISCIPLINARITY: THE CASE OF THE COVID-19 CRISIS
Jean FRAYSSINHES is a professor of Business Science, Economics and Management Science and an associate researcher in Education and Training Sciences (UMR Education, Formation, Travail, Savoirs : EFTS of the Université de Toulouse Jean-Jaurès and a member of the CIRET Board of Directors. He defines himself as a pure product of lifelong learning. With a multi-disciplinary background: humanities (Latin, Greek, ancient literature, general and Greek philosophy), higher education in economics, management, commercial law, then educational sciences (sociology, psychology, history of science, philosophy of science, pedagogy, andragogy, neuroscience), he has followed numerous professional training courses in intercultural management, NLP, transactional analysis (TA), enneagram, project management, finance, international law, etc. His career path is the result of a series of unexpected encounters that have led him down three distinctly different paths: as a senior executive; as a teacher of business, economics and management; and as a researcher in educational science. Hence his current status as associate researcher with the UMR (EFTS, Toulouse University) since 2003. He has a wide range of interests. At the end of the 90s he became involved in the digital world, before discovering Transdisciplinarity (TD) in 2008, and modestly trying to understand its general meaning and particular interest. In this context, he has been able to appropriate the concept of TD and propose a theorisation of the mathematics of digital networks. At the same time, he has just begun a review of TD around the world, with the aim of carrying out a meta-analysis of the different visions of TD depending on the country, culture and ‘parent’ discipline of the researcher. His article shows how we have gradually entered the age of complexity since the early 1970s, and how to deal with it efficiently. Jean Frayssinhes’ response, citing Morin, Nicolescu and several other major players in TD, is that we need to change our paradigm and our way of thinking, to overcome our lack of understanding and avoid being faced with failure. More specifically, the author advocates questioning philosophy and transdisciplinarity to understand to what extent they can help us to confront the digital world in which we are evolving, so as to be able to solve the complex problems we are faced with. The COVID-19 pandemic serves as a comparative thread in his epistemological approach, which also touches on his favourite subject, mathetics.
THEATRICAL SPACE AS A LABORATORY OF REALITY: A FANCIFUL BIOGRAPHY OF FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR
In 2008 Guillaume MIKA enrolled at the Ecole supérieure de Théâtre de Cannes et Marseille (ERAC’M), where his teachers included Valérie Dréville, Charlotte Clamens, Nikolaus, Youri Pogrebnitchko, Hubert Colas and Robert Cantarella. There he made a number of short films, as well as his first feature-length work. On leaving the school, he worked for a year at the Comédie-Française as a student actor for Jacques Vincey, Alain Françon and Christophe Rauck. In 2012, he created his first carte-blanche production, The Confession of Stavroguine, based on Dostoyevsky, which became the first production of the Cie (company) des Trous dans la Tête, founded in Toulon. The second was La Ballade du Minotaure in 2014, a meditation on the life of a hybrid being with a dancing actress, a bull’s helmet and a corpse. Then came his first stage productions, combining stage writing and scientific experiments: La Flèche (a fanciful biography of Frederick Winslow Taylor) – winner of a Beaumarchais-SACD grant – premiered in 2019 at the Théâtre Joliette, then Prénom Nom at the Scène Nationale de Gap in 2022, a show-experiment between ethology and social issues based on a giant tardigrade that has to decide what school to attend. His work as an actor is central to his career: with Hubert Colas (Z.E. P), Betty Heurtebise (Le Pays de Rien), Nikolaus (clown in Chants Périlleux), Renaud-Marie Leblanc (Fratrie), Frédéric Grosche (Ta Blessure est ce Monde Ardent), Les Fugaces (wandering street show), Vivants and work with Pierre Meunier/Marguerite Bordat (for a series of experimental short films) and Amine Adjina/Emilie Prévosteau (Dans la Chaleur du Foyer, Retrouvailles! , Projet Newman). Curious to vary aesthetics and ways of working, he is also a video creator (for the Cie Du Double and the Cie Souricière) and musician – sound designer (Presque Parfait by Nikolaus at CirqA in 2020, Mister Tambourine Man directed by Karelle Prugnaud for the In of Avignon 2021, Shahara directed by Sarah Tick…). His contribution to Plastir highlights “the theatrical space as a laboratory of the real: a fanciful biography of Frederick Winslow Taylor” which describes a specific artistic process: that of the gesture initiated by Guillaume Mika during the creation of the show La Flèche between the start of writing in 2017 and the first performance in May 2019. The article describes in more detail the work processes based on machine construction, stage writing, scientific studies and improvisation management. It’s a kind of appendix, an exegesis of the show. Through the author’s intimate experience, we follow the different ways in which he has brought the arts and sciences into dialogue, whether through staging or the hybrid way in which his themes are linked.