excerpt
Foreword (p. 20-22)
The University of Paris is changing. It is even going through a metamorphosis, in the sense intended by poet Ovid, who could have well told the many transformations undergone by the academic body over the past several years. Dismembered in 1970 by the Faure act (1969)—which created thirteen autonomous universities by dividing the venerable Sorbonne—, the academic Leviathan is now experiencing a new and more organic mutation. Since the enactment of the “law relating to the freedom and responsibility of universities” in 2007, universities have been gaining autonomy and witnessing a growing sense of belonging, tied to increasingly asserted identity awareness. Evidence of this trend can be noted in the creation of several alumni societies— networks that so far only existed in the grandes écoles, the elite engineering and business schools. A particular example of this phenomenon is the Paste association created in 2012, which brings together graduates of the masters degree “Science and Technology of the Exhibition” at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Should these initiatives be interpreted as the emergence of a real “community spirit” within the university? But what would this community be exactly? What singularity would it embody? What would make up its unity? What would be its limits? What would be its sheath?
“If there is a community spirit, it is devoid of any corporate desire,” answer in unison Marie Chênel, Sokhane Toure and Pauline Toulouzou. The founding members of Paste stress the fact that their society is also open to all the participants and contributors of the course, as well as any individual wishing to support it. It appears that this new spirit will be embodied by an open community, without borders nor boundaries—a contemporary community, capable of core changes and adaptation; a welcoming, bearing, sensitive community; a community without affiliation: a communal community.
How should this spirit be embodied by and by? How to make tangible, if not a visible, a community with no single possible image? This is the very goal of Paste's commission. Having turned to the New Patrons program, initiated and supported by the Fondation de France, it entrusted Claude Closky with this issue.
The artist's first response was to put aside the idea of embodying and prefer the idea of inscribing. Placing himself in the field of writing and language rather than in the realm of images, he chose to embody the spirit of Paste by means of typography. This typographic community softly echoes the bygone illumination techniques: ancient frames of the first representations of the human body, curled up in the historiated initials of medieval manuscripts. Claude Closky's artwork allows anyone who wishes to transcribe his or her name in a unique graphic composition, both predefined and randomized, thanks to a software hosted on Paste's website. Entitled Rectangulaire, the work then generates a business card, ultimately operating a final metamorphosis— rather like those of Vitruvius than Ovid's—of the community member by its inscription within the standardized boundaries of a rectangle; a shape that has become the contemporary emblem of a certain identity.
Jérôme Poggi
Mediator accredited by the Fondation de France for the New Patrons program in Paris and in the Île-de-France region (SOCIETIES / Objet de production)
