1/ Interview ( click here to download the whole text in PDF format )

With Françoise Pointard, Director of Espace Culture Lille 1

1.1 Espace Culture Lille 1, at the crossroads of disciplines and practices

“Espace Culture’s objective is to look at intellectual thought from an artistic perspective”.

“In choosing our conferences and artists, we attempt to strike a balance between maintaining intellectual and artistic rigour and ensuring accessibility to the largest audience possible”.

“Espace Culture is neither a museum nor a gallery: it’s an atypical place where we address things in an atypical way”.

“Building on a lecture series dubbed Les Rendez-vous d’Archimède, Espace Culture Lille 1 develops a multidisciplinary programme that combines dance, theatre, exhibitions and workshops dealing with different forms of artistic practice”.

"We encourage the artists animating workshops to build on a theme from one of the lectures in Les Rendez-vous d’Archimède. This helps to create a link between the different activities of Espace Culture and means that the ideas and works generated by students in the workshops relate to the programming. We try to ensure that all these works are not merely juxtaposed, but that they intersect”.

“Publishing is another important thrust, with the publication of a feature magazine, Les Nouvelles d’Archimèdes, and a collection comprising all the lectures, Les Rendez-vous d’Archimèdes, put out by L’Harmattan. Publishing is what projects Espace Culture onto the international stage”.

1.2 A place at the heart of international programming: Espace Culture, a window on the metropolis

1.2.1 Local partnerships

“In terms of artistic programming, I love the idea of developing partnerships with local cultural institutions on the one hand, and with different audiences and groups of locals on the other".

"This involves groundwork with associations and secondary schools; it leads to collaborative programming that enables us to build audiences, such as the one this year with the Rose des Vents and the Méliès, on the theme of “borders”".

“Coming up with projects is not enough, one must actually put them together”.

“We have a natural connection with the other universities, Lille 2 and Lille 3. Next year, we will develop a partnership with Lille 2 and Lille 3 on the theme of war”.

“We obviously work in collaboration with the city of Villleneuve-d’Ascq to shape this idea of the university’s openness to the community—that it should not be a place where we merely hold meetings with and for researchers. The challenge is to move beyond the confines of our own space”.

1.2.2 A local, national and cross-border network

“The exhibition we are currently hosting, Frontières [Borders], co-produced by the Museum of Lyon and the Contemporary Culture Centre of Barcelona, is a good example of a cross-border project where a work of art illustrates a scientific proposition: indeed, we will be welcoming Michel Fouchet, the exhibition’s scientific curator, geographer and professor of geopolitics in Paris, for a lecture on European borders”.

“We are working on the ‘borders’ theme with all geographers in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. This encourages people, especially students, to circulate throughout the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region and come together around a common theme”.

"Having lecturers from all around the world allows Espace Culture to have an impact at both an international and a local level and contributes to the dynamism of the city of Villeneuve-d’Ascq from a cultural and intellectual point of view”.