Surveillé[tiret]surveillant

Between mistrust and criticism of the rigidity of academic criteria, how can research and creation be allied to encourage exploration?

Institutional bureaucracy imposes surveillance on researchers in ways that are sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious. Jérémie Roussel confronts and appropriates the regulations of the Master's degree in art practice, a training path increasingly taken to claim the status of scholarly artist. This exhibition embraces the status of research by questioning the role of academic constraints in artistic careers, thus underlining a reconsideration of the distinction between research and creative activity. How can we resist the standardization they entail?

Roussel pushes back the limits of regulations, taking alienation to its extreme, while at the same time managing to produce a liberating detour that opens up new avenues for the development of his work, considering the exhibition, among other things, as the result of his research, for which the dissertation template serves as the object of study. In the exhibition, the methodology - a scientific criterion par excellence - and the quarterly evaluation forms are overturned, not just so that the student-artist can prove his or her attendance, but rather so that audiences find themselves monitoring the institutional system.

The monumental number of working hours accumulated since fall 2021 includes time dedicated to creation, professional activities and academic work, testifying to the interrelated nature of these spheres in the life of a Master's student in museology and art practice. The imperative of this dedication is imposed by a system in which up-and-coming artists must bend to the standardization of their own pace of life, according to what the university model allows and what it imposes. All this while having to find the means to finance and develop their practice, when the data collected shows that only 12.065% of time was devoted to creative exploration in Atelier I and II courses. Where the university system influences the individualism of artistic practice towards erasure in favor of a standardization of the figure of the researcher, Roussel hijacks academic incongruity to produce a politically engaged presentation.

At the same time, he reflects on the whole of research-creation in favor of research through creation, in the context of an exhibition in a university gallery. This creative project embodies a certain theoretical performativity, but also as a method of producing, exhibiting and developing knowledge.

The text was written in line with Roussel's desire to adopt a self-effacing posture, making way for others and other things: the artist tends to disappear, replaced by the protocols of the University, the constraints of the Galerie UQO, artificial intelligence and the methods of the host venue. This text was written by Galerie UQO's curator and director, as well as its coordinator.

Jérémie Roussel lives and works in Gatineau, where he is currently pursuing a master's degree in museology and art practices at the Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO). His work questions the power dynamics that shape the institutional and alienating conventions he comes up against.

Roussel's interests have been central to his work for many years, and he has taken part in a number of reflections on the challenges of research-creation in the academic milieu. Among his recent interventions, he was invited to represent the ÉdAC (UQO) at the exhibition and colloquium of the 28th Rencontre interuniversitaire des maîtrise en art du Québec (RIMA). As a member of the 2J2R duo (in collaboration with Jessica Ragazzini), Roussel exhibited at the XL event at AXENÉO7 (2023), followed by a first solo show at the Centre d'exposition Art-Image (2023), whose project expanded to include a series of workshop-conferences and an international round table.

Credits: Jérémie Roussel, Portrait of the author of “DE-C4Sculpture-3.0”, 2024

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)