"Nous ne sommes pas le nombre que nous croyons être" an event of the Daniel & Nina Carasso Foundation, in part­ner­ship with the École poly­tech­nique / École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs and the Cité inter­na­tionale des arts. Produced by Bétonsalon - Center for Art and Research & Villa Vassilieff. February 2nd & 3rd, 2018


























An Arts & Sciences event to   imagine the future!
From Friday, February 2nd to Saturday, February 3rd 2018
2 days and 1 night, 36 hours non-stop
“We are not the number we think we are” will offer an expe­ri­ence for 36 hours non-stop, involving hun­dreds of artists, researchers and thinkers from var­ious geo­graph­ical and dis­ci­plinary back­grounds. At the heart of the pro­ject: within working spaces, focusing on hetero­ge­neous groups of people and col­lec­tives, gath­ered tem­porarily around pressing issues of our con­tem­po­rary world. They will take over mul­tiple spaces within the Cité inter­na­tionale des arts in Paris, a meeting ground open to the dia­logue between cul­tures where vis­i­tors will be invited to reflect on the pre­sent and map together path­ways for the future. The common thread of this bound­less pro­gramme is the fic­tional world of The Compass Rose (1982) a book of short sto­ries by science fic­tion writer Ursula K. Le Guin.
We will be searching for "a common lan­guage in which all resis­tance to instru­mental con­trol dis­ap­pears and all hetero­geneity can be sub­mited to dis­as­sembly, reassembly, invest­ment, and exchange." (Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New York; Routledge, 1991.)
"We are not the number we think we are" will depart from Ursula K. Le Guin’s col­lec­­tion of short sto­ries, The Compass Rose, to explore the realm of fic­­tion and create the nec­es­sary dis­­­tance from bare reality to best under­­s­tand the issues of the pre­sent time. We will try to sketch the land­s­cape of what could exist in the future by drawing some lines from these short sto­ries, which by their great variety of tones and sub­­­jects invite us to move in every direc­­tion at once. They explore fan­­tastic futures, that are imag­i­­nary, but likely, making us envi­­sion other worlds while showing us the one we know. They will script to inhabit dif­ferent real­i­ties, and build alter­­na­­tives to the way we live today. We will try to get out of our com­­fort zone, accept the unpre­­dictable, find our way through the unknown and ques­­tion again the value of evi­­dence, doubt, acci­­dent and inves­ti­­ga­­tion.
The explo­ra­tion of these fic­­tional con­ti­­nents will tem­­porarily take over the Cité inter­­na­­tionale des arts. It will become the place where pro­cesses of work and devel­op­­ment of knowl­­edge will be made pal­­pable, vis­ible, audible. Over two days and one night, sci­en­tists, artists, designers, researchers in human sciences, cura­­tors, and many others will gather and get involved in the con­struc­­tion of new types of expe­ri­ences to ques­­tion our cer­­tain­ties and test hypotheses on what we believe and what we know, and allow for the emer­­gence of new forms of sit­u­ated knowl­­edge. The dia­­logue between these par­tic­i­­pants will allow us to ask our­­selves this fun­­da­­mental ques­­tion: how to invent forms which summon and rep­re­sent, which acti­­vate and mobi­lize by involving con­stel­la­­tions of players in order to imagine a desir­able future and a pro­­ject of society that emerges from our col­lec­­tive will?
An event of the Daniel & Nina Carasso Foundation, in part­ner­ship with the “arts & sciences” Chair, founded by the École poly­tech­nique / École nationale supérieure des Arts 
Décoratifs – PSL / Daniel & Nina Carasso Foundation and the Cité inter­na­tionale des arts.
Produced by Bétonsalon - Center for Art and Research & Villa Vassilieff
Curated by Mélanie Bouteloup
Steering comitee: Samuel Bianchini (EnsAD), Jean-Marc Chomaz (École poly­tech­nique), Emmanuel Mahé (EnsAD - PSL), Anastassia Makridou-Bretonneau (Daniel & Nina Carasso Foundation), Valérie Pihet (SACRe - PSL) and Bénédicte Alliot (Cité inter­na­tionale des arts)
Free entry (sub­ject to avail­ability)*
* Except for the Discontrol Party, 10pm-5:30am – 10€. 
Tickets :
You can find all news on www.chaire-arts-sciences.org