PRIX ÉTUDIANT 2023 : THE NOMINATED ARTISTS

Three student projects have been nominated for the fourth edition of the COAL – Culture & Diversité student prize on the theme of plants. The aim of the Ecology Prize is to support young artists and students at French art and cultural schools who imagine, experiment with and propose concrete, creative solutions to current ecological issues.

For its fourth edition, the COAL – Culture & Diversity Student Prize call for projects brought together 54 submissions (49 individual projects and 5 group projects) from 31 schools in the arts and culture field, reflecting the sensitivity of these students to ecological issues.

The COAL Student Prize – Culture & Diversity 2023 joins with Nature Reserves of France through a residency program.

The artists NOMINATED FOR the^4th edition of the COAL – Culture & Diversity Student Prize and their projects

1. Chloé Boulet (École Supérieure d’Art de Dunkerque – Tourcoing),
   Ce chemin que nous tracerons
   
2. Nikita Leroy (Villa Arson),
   Holistic listening
   
3. Louisa Selleret (École nationale supérieure de création industrielle),
   Weeds
   

PRESENTATION OF STUDENT PROJECTS NOMINATED FOR THE COAL – CULTURE & DIVERSITY 2023 STUDENT PRIZE

Chloé Boulet
studies at
Ecole Supérieure d’Art de Dunkerque – Tourcoing
. She reflects on how technology and science shape the narratives that influence our ways of being in the world. She proposes contextual performative actions that invite us to reconnect with the living. Her work oscillates between scientific veracity and poetic fiction, which for her is a way of challenging the rules of reality and critiquing our ways of existing without entering into a form of infertile condemnation.

In response to the crisis of the sensitive that we are going through,

Ce chemin que nous tracerons

is an action-performative whose aim is to map out a new phyto-centric hiking itinerary. The project will be carried out in collaboration with a donkey, and the domesticated animal-human duo, equipped with a mobile bio-photography laboratory, will set off to survey the territory to the rhythm of the donkey’s choices. This project aims to give plants a new visibility by showing us how sensitive we are to their movements and modes of existence.

Born in 1999 in Paris,
Nikita Leroy
lives and studies in Nice at the
Villa Arson
. Situated at the intersection between sculpture and musical performance, his practice allows hybrid instruments to emerge, inscribed in feedback loops between their environment and the structures that animate them. Using a variety of media, she explores forms of holistic relationship with the world and seeks a belvedere in the midst of contemporary informational chaos.

Her project

Holistic Listening

is a dreamlike fiction created from recordings and sensor recordings, highlighting the complexity of animation in the biome of a nature reserve. A camouflaged listening station in situ, offered to the public in the form of a sculpture, will enable visitors to hear the poetry of a live plant concert being played through headphones, for a moment of curiosity and meditative introspection.

Louisa Selleret
describes herself as “eternally eco-anxious”, which is why she regularly works with self-sufficient communities and actors involved in sustainable projects. Stung by an existential crisis, she took a 4-year break from her design studies to train as a prosthetist for amputees and “design just what’s needed”. Back at
ENSCI les Ateliers
she sees design as an open, experimental discipline that must play its part in repairing the world.

Pulling up, sectioning, uprooting, etc. In some nature reserves, action is being taken to counter the proliferation of invasive plants. The project

Adventices

project is designed to be itinerant, with the aim of collecting and then transforming the cellulose-rich material that is discarded. Reduced to paper pulp, then reconstructed using the formal codes of plant biology anatomy, this giant sample will make weeds cohabit as a single material, that of “plant”.

COAL STUDENT AWARD CEREMONY
–
CULTURE & DIVERSITY 2023

The COAL – Culture & Diversity 2023 Student Prize will be awarded on September 20 at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris, at the same time as the COAL 2023.

JURY 2023

The jury is composed of
Charlotte Meunier
President of Réserves naturelles de France, and
Lucile Deschamps
General Delegate of the Fondation Culture & Diversité, as well as the members of the Prix COAL 2023 jury:

1. 
   Cathy Bouvard
   Director of Ateliers Médicis
2. Thomas Delage, Head of the Mobilizing Citizens for Biodiversity Department at the French Office for Biodiversity
3. Maïté Delmas, Honorary Attaché of the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, co-chair of the Global Partnership for Plant Conservation
4. Catherine Dobler, Founder of the LAccolade Foundation
5. Alexia Fabre, Director of the Beaux-Arts de Paris
6. Christine Germain-Donnat, Director of the Museum of Hunting and Nature
7. Olivier Lerude, Ministry of Culture
8. Michael Marder, Philosopher, IKERBASQUE professor at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) Vitoria-Gasteiz
9. Alexandra McIntosh, Director of CIAP – Île de Vassivière, a contemporary art center of national interest
10. Stéphanie Pécourt, Director of the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles/Paris
11. Erik SamakhArtist
12. Irene Varano, Director of Sales at ArtConcept Gallery

DOTATION

The Culture & Diversity Foundation grants the winner a two-month residency in the Nature Reserves of France, along with a production grant of 5,000 euros. Within the framework of the residency, the Culture & Diversity Foundation covers accommodation, food and transportation costs.

PARTNERS

The Réserves Naturelles de France
(RNF) coordinates a national network of over 1,000 nature protection professionals, working on a daily basis in the territories where nearly 356 Nature Reserves exist. Their actions are based on three missions: the knowledge of the natural biological and geological heritage, its management and protection, the sensitization and the discovery by the citizens of these spaces of nature, life, meetings and creation. As an ambassador for nature reserves, RNF is the voice of nature, actively mobilizing all of society’s stakeholders, particularly in the field of culture.

AWARD HOLDERS

The COAL – Culture & Diversity Student Prize is supported by the Culture & Diversity Foundation and the COAL association.

The Culture & Diversity Foundation,
a Fimalac corporate foundation created by Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, aims to promote access to the arts and culture for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Since its launch in 2006, it has been designing and implementing sustainable programs directly in the field with its cultural, educational and social partners. More than 50,000 young people have already benefited from its actions.

Through the COAL Prize, international cooperation initiatives and over a hundred exhibitions and local cultural projects, COALcreated in France in 2008 by professionals in the fields of contemporary art, ecology and research, is the first French organization to promote the emergence of a new culture of ecology.