[2022] Workshop with Grace Denis in Pierre-Bénite

Grace Denis' working materials are sound, image, and the edible. She gathers these elements in the form of interactive installations or hospitable situations that are rooted in agricultural research, an exploration of the dynamics of biodiversity or the experimentation of a specific cultivation process that can itself be linked to a lunar cycle. Attached to collaboration and participation, her artistic proposals are conceived primarily with farmers and then invite other know-how (and particularly those of the kitchen). The meal or the common consumption of edible materials become poetic tools of transmission and mediation that invite us to reconsider the way in which "we have desensitized our relationship to consumption" while (re)becoming aware of our relationship to the living.

In Pierre-Bénite, Grace Denis has been invited by Veduta to work on the history of the local soil and the recent establishment of an Urban Farm following the demolition of a housing block in the Arcades sector, and in a desire to link the city center and the Haute Roche district. After having investigated the history of local agriculture and identified typical species of Pierre-Bénite, she wishes accompany the volunteer chefs to join her in order to exchange around the notion of preservation, a starting point allowing to think together about both the perpetuation of a history and the protection of species and more broadly of local ecology. The whole will take the form of a convivial research-action inviting other inhabitants to gather around this celebration of local fertility while opening the space for a collective reflection about our contemporary lifestyles and our ways of consuming.

Know more about Grace Denis's work : gracegloriadenis.com

Visuel : Preparing for the meal in the series Aural Oral © Grace Denis