Interview

Project partner and participatory artist François Matarasso answers questions about co-creation and its potential to be socially transformative. The interview contains integrated audio description and subtitles in English

Contribution to the operational definition and the modelling of the "environmental memory" for the French Long-Term Ecological Research Network (Zones Ateliers)

International audienceThis article aims to define the concept of "environmental memory" within the "Zones Ateliers" of the Environment, Life and Societies Program of the CNRS (French National Committee for Scientific Research), and to present the stakes of its conceptual modelling and the main strategies to develop. The "environmental memory" is defined as the sum of the explicit, persistent and structured representations of data, knowledge, models and scientific know-how, attached to an anthroposystem, in order to facilitate its access, its sharing and its re-use. Its modelling, whose realisation is currently under process, makes it possible to identify the system to be abstracted and formalises the data to be acquired, the tasks to be realised, the methods of problems' resolution to be applied during a research project management. The implementation techniques are mainly based on Internet technologies, Geographic Information Systems, Relational Database Management Systems, Knowledge-Based and Resolution Problems Systems

Contribution à la définition opérationnelle et à la modélisation de la mémoire environnementale

Journées du Programme Environnement, Vie et Sociétés du CNRS, 12, 13 et 14 novembre 200

Moving with the times: surviving film collective cultures in British and German contexts

This article examines recent developments in documentary film-making in British and German film collective cultures owing to evolving sociopolitical and socioeconomic circumstances since the countercultural era. Research on film collectives has tended to concentrate on their sociopolitical function as a platform for agitation, enquiry, exposition and expression of alternative perspectives. This function, it is argued, renders film collective cultures distinctive in facilitating democratic practice. However, the aforementioned circumstances have gradually fostered other ascendant imperatives alongside the sociopolitical function, the interplay of which causes huge problems for film collective producers as do demands from subsidy and broadcasters. Drawing on relevant scholarship and ethnography, this article explores producers’ responses to (1) the competing imperatives, (2) to pressures from subsidy and broadcasters and (3) to perceptions of work following these. My main argument is three-fold: first, producers have devised mechanisms to circumvent pressures some of which though pragmatic, threaten to undermine the sociopolitical significance of film collective cultures in democratic communication. Second, I emphasise the need to revise the theoretical propositions guiding this field to reflect current developments. Third, I suggest further research on the impact of increasing professionalisation and commercialisation, on appropriate strategies for self-sustenance and on effective ways of preserving the history of film collectives as part of a shared heritage