LDRE (Lines of Research and Experimentation)

ENDA is conducting a structured research policy on LDREs, lines of approach that each address a particular issue.

The LDREs focus the practitioner’s research on a subject considered as essential in an effort of continuity in order to deepen it. The LDREs evolve and enrich over time. Practitioners can build their approach and/or project in a specific LDRE.

The LDREs are studied in depth on several levels. More information about the levels

Monitoring LDRE

This LDRE consists of an in-depth monitoring of practitioners’ projects from intention to realization using methods and tools. The sessions of this LDRE are based on practical and theoretical exercises. Their objective is to help practitioners advance in their existing or future personal processes. The first levels of this LDRE are devoted to an assessment of the practitioners’ situation and in the putting in place of light projects around the chosen questions or issues.

Without Art LDRE

This LDRE is dedicated to specialists from outside the art world who deal with other LDREs. Found as they are, these specialists are proposed by the practitioners as a third party. The aim of these sessions is to give practitioners the opportunity to address certain topics through approaches outside of art.

The Invisual LDRE

The invisual is a genre of art that exists outside of the work of art. It is an art whose visibility does not obey the visual characteristics of art. The invisual is a genre of art and not a trend or movement. Invisible practices are inscribed in reality to such an extent that they cannot always be distinguished from their surroundings. This LDRE is about developing an invisual project or approach. The sessions combine practice and theory, relying on fruitful exchanges between practitioners.

Economies LDRE

A process cannot be accomplished unless it finds its own economy. Formulating a personal economy specific to one’s practice is a sign of vital independence. This LDRE is about inventing economies other than the art market, out of existing models or out of nothing, specific and adapted to one’s practice. These alter-economies are characterized by the passage from a product-value to activity-value. Most often it is the practice itself that dictates its economy.

Strategies LDRE

Strategy is the art of designing and coordinating a set of actions to achieve an objective. Introducing the notion of strategy into art is indispensable when dealing with practices excluded from the constituted and instituted art world, which sometimes need to deal with hostile contexts and frameworks in order to exist and develop. The practice that dictates the strategies to be adopted. Notions associated with strategy are: the liquid, the invisual, the furtive, the viral, infiltration, ruse. This LDRE will be about developing a project or an approach starting from a chosen strategy, elaborating that strategy to promote a project, approach or thought, and conductiung work related to the notion of strategy or of a particular strategy.

Terminology LDRE

Terminology is the set of terms specific to a particular field. Language is not a fixed entity, as the world changes and vocabulary evolves. A term is often born out of an existing practice, defining what there was previously no word for. Terms often take shape within the realities of art, which do not define them but rather express them. The word is active — it can describe, generate, or modify reality. The terms currenly used in art cannot name certain existing, emerging or future realities. New ones are necessary. These terms do not stop or limit the practices from which they originate. The structure and influence vectors of art. The aim of this LDRE is to become aware of the importance of words and concepts through their role in language and their relation to practice. It will also be about linking one’s work to terms or concepts.

Practicing the Institution LDRE

Practicing the institution means considering the institution as an artistic format in its own right. In the same way that photography questioned the criteria of representation in painting and in the media of the 19th and 20th centuries, how can the institution today redraw the contours of artistic expression? The 20th century was the site of repeated institutional attacks which, if revealed in their ineffectiveness, also demonstrated that the institution is a determining actor in artistic creation. This LDRE will be about formulating the definition of practicing the institution and experimenting with this format through different theoretical and practical processes.

Singularity LDRE

The singularity LDRE aims to study what is at play in the processes of creation and innovation in order to raise awareness and re-assess approaches to singularity. Singularity, definede as the guarantee of our autonomy and universality, enables us to self-determine differently and thus to reinvent the world. The challenge is to give a legibility to the singularities at work in artistic practices and, more broadly, to place the human being at the center of the economic, technological and philosophical questioning that the 21st century must confront. The study of singularity will allow one to make the necessary distinctions within one’s practice, to subvert and reinvent it.

Law LDRE

Art is inscribed in society and is in this sense linked to laws. To have a non-aligned practice does not mean to be outlawed. The law of art can interact with the law in diverse ways, and artistic practice must deal with the law intelligently. This LDRE approaches art from the point of view of law, legality, illegality, the status of the artist, authority, forms of organization, legitimacy, and illegitimacy.

Policy LDRE

This LDRE emphasizes the political dimension of art from the point of view that politics, above all, represent the world at its most real. This LDRE is about what is political in art or the relationship between art and politics. It is also about the impact or the absence of impact of art on reality and art’s capacity to effectively transform reality beyond its own existence. Politics means art that is not subject to anything other than itself.

Practitioners’ LDRE

In this LDRE, former practitioners present their processes and projects to new practitioners. Practitioners who become presenters are in turn invited to speak, individually or in groups, about the progress of their practice or specific topics.

Exceptions LDRE

This LDRE brings together proposals that fall outside the other LDREs. These proposals take place at unusual dates and times. Some interventions of this LDRE may give rise to other LDREs.

Lateral LDRE

This LDRE is about applying to art what is called lateral thinking: a set of problem-solving methods that involves approaching problems from several angles instead of focusing on a single approach. This LDRE is an exercise in innovation in considering an impossible solution that can serve as a step towards finding a possible solution. Lateral thinking is defined in opposition to vertical thinking, characterized by continuity between steps, step-by-step validation of hypotheses, and intermediate results.

Conviviality LDRE

The purpose of this LDRE is to reinforce comraderie and conviviality between practitioners. The LDRE is composed of monthly dinners organised by the practitioners themselves. This conviviality aims to establish links between them. Conviviality is an essential dimension of the practitioners’ working group.

Methodologies LDRE

The work carried out by the practitioners cannot become concrete reality without being structured in a real way, including its most practical aspects. A project must have budget, communication, and structure… An artist is no longer a solitary being who expresses his genius in his studio, in the shadow of the world… but rather an open-minded, versatile individual, who must know how to write a communication plan, a strategy, a plan of action, who organizes himself… In this LDRE, specialists in law, accounting, communication can intervene.

Common LDRE

This LDRE consists of informal meetings between practitioners to share their resources. The aim is to pool their resources. It is a place of mutual help enabling them to test their respective approaches in order to progress. This LDRE is dedicated to the pooling and sharing of practitioners’ sources and resources: relationships, plans, opportunities, facilities, etc. This LDRE augements the generosity and reciprocity of practitioners.

Services LDRE

BdP (Bureau of Practitioners)
Practitioners have their own expectations according to their background, approach and current situation, but these expectations converge towards common objectives in a corpus of teaching, pedagogical experiences and new working methods. During the course offered by ENDA, practitioners have access to a range of services and advice aimed at helping them to put their projects into practice. These services are quite varied and range from assistance in drafting the statutes of structures to advice on the implementation of related communication tools, from the design and drafting of documents to the establishment of budgets to preparation for public speaking.

General Knowledge LDRE

This LDRE is a corpus of knowledge related to art history without necessarily being limited by it. Practitioners’ knowledge of art history is uneven, due to their varying training and status. The aim of this LDRE is not to learn art history but to be informed about the past in a way that is useful to practitioners in their projects and processes. It is essential for us to have a general knowledge sufficiently substantiated to know where we come from and especially to know how we situate our project in a history of art that goes beyond our lifetimes.

External Projects LDRE

This LDRE consists of setting up projects within other establishments/ structures or in the co-organization of collective projects with other structures. Collaboration and cooperation with other structures is essential and carries an experiential value — for practitioners but also for the partners themselves and, if they are schools, for their own students.

Internal Projects LDRE

This LDRE consists of projects carried out within ENDA by intervenors on subjects related to the intervenor’s work. They can exist outside the time frames of the modules and their temporality depends on the work to be carried out. The aim of this LDRE is to insert the practitioners into the realities of the interveners’ projects in order to confront them. The experiences they will draw out will be used for their own thinking and practices.

Practices’ LDRE

In this LDRE, intervenors present their practices. Practitioners respond and ask questions.