This event offers to explore the areas of overlap between the marvelous and the scientific, knowledge and beliefs, through artistic and theoretical practices that question how science can produce imagination and how the wonderful can shape forms of knowledge.
“The Esban, the higher school of fine arts in Nîmes, is an institution of higher education and like any good school, it organizes beautiful things. The event will start on Thursday, April 2 at 5:30 pm at the showcase of the museum of old Nîmes for the opening of the exhibition ‘We are at least thirty thousand in this night’.”
This exhibition, coordinated by artist Sophie Blet, was collectively created by third and fourth year students of Esban. It presents a confrontation between their original creations and a selection of objects from the museum’s collection. The pedagogical and artistic project initiated and accompanied by Arnaud Vasseux aims to experiment with the possibilities of presenting heritage objects in relation to the present.
The partnership between the two neighboring institutions is part of the rich history of the building, which became in 1910 the Palais des Beaux-Arts, hosting both the Conservatory of Music, the School of Fine Arts, and then the museum of the Old Nîmes.
On Friday, April 4, a second day of art and research meeting will be held on the theme: Marvelous ~ Scientific: experimental connections. Supported by the pedagogical projects led by Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc and Lila Neutre, this day offers to explore the areas of overlap between the marvelous and the scientific, knowledge and beliefs, through artistic and theoretical practices that question how science can produce imagination and how the wonderful can shape forms of knowledge.
Far from any binary opposition between knowledge and superstition, the day invites to recognize that the marvelous is not the opposite of the scientific, but a possible vector of questioning, a tool for shifting perspectives, a driver of discoveries and therefore of research.
While contemporary Western knowledge seems to be embodied in increasingly efficient technological devices for measurement, calculation, and visualization, it seems necessary (even urgent) to rethink our relationship to experience, situated knowledge, technologies, and imaginaries.
The works of the invited artists and researchers navigate between observation and divination, analysis and poetry, rationality and magic. Instead of opposing these terms, they consider alliances, experimental connections that outline new epistemologies and allow to consider the marvelous as a critical and heuristic tool.
The day revolves around duo exchanges that will discuss unique or collective ways of interpreting images, bodies, the sky – in short, the world.
This day is the second in a series of meetings dedicated to research-creation organized at the higher school of fine arts in Nîmes. It is part of the GARDENER program jointly supported by Esban, Nîmes University, and the University Hospital Center, which promotes interdisciplinary collaborations between artists, researchers, and partners from the region around the notion of vulnerability and new forms of knowledge production and sharing.
This new event, taking place in two parts between spring 2026 and 2027, will jointly question reason and enchantment, protocol and magic, art and research.
Find the complete program by clicking here.
