[Audio version - in French only]
PIERRE DESCARGUES: Jean-Michel Sanejouand who has already exhibited various space planning projects, for example that of the development of the Seine valley, where he planned to fill quarries with water and to accustom walkers to playing with stones, is now tackling a more ambitious, larger planning. Quite simply, that of our planet, Earth. It can be seen at the Galerie Germain, rue Guénégo in Paris. And there, we wonder a little in front of Sanejouand's Orientation Tables because the artistic process replaces scientific reflection.
JEAN-MICHEL SANEJOUAND: So, if I had this idea of organizing the space of planet Earth, after having organized the space, or the spaces, rather, of the Seine valley between Paris and Le Havre, it was a bit, at the start, yes, a sort of challenge, trying to move on to a plan so enormous that, obviously, what we could know, or if you like, the habit that I could have had to work, would obviously be very disturbed. And I was basically trying to do a second jump. But then, even if it means taking a leap, let's go for it frankly, I took the maximum leap, if I dare say so. But I had to find a method to work. The previous method, if I can say so, a method which had served me for the Seine valley, was, basically, to invent a sort of scenario. I took the time I needed to invent it. But here I realized that it was not possible. There was no possible scenario. So what was needed was like having a snack. But for that, I still had to start from something. So, I started from my previous works. I looked again at the photographic documents of these small interventions. In space and time it was tiny, what I did. Even if, at the time, it could seem immense because it was 400 meters long, for example. And I tried to relate them to planet Earth. So, concretely, with one of the hemispheres. I choose the graphics seen from the northern hemisphere or seen from the southern one. And then, from there, associations of ideas are coming to me. I paint, for example, Australia red, if you like. Or the waters brown. Or the continents all in black. And then I add notations. I highlight certain places. This is a series of associations of ideas. I don't do it to look pretty. I don't put a little red here, a little yellow there. No, that's not that at all. These are specific ideas that I visualize in this way. But I don't say which. Because if I return to the same subject, so to speak, or the same approach, two weeks, a month, a year after, I will not have the same associations of ideas, I know that. And what interests me is not so much the associations of ideas that I have made and to impose them on others, by explaining them, but on the contrary, to suggest other associations of mind that each one can make freely. It's a kind of free play. I read a lot of things, I find out about a lot of things that scientific research brings to me. But, if it is a question of communicating with others, and in fact, that is a bit what art is about, if it is a question of knowledge in the practical sense of the term, how to live, how to be happy, how to have a certain conscience, how to feel good or bad about yourself, and why, finally, I don't believe that science offers satisfactory answers. I think science is... it's a method of knowing. There are others, by the way. There is a political method of knowledge. Art is another method of knowledge. And indeed, there is a bit of antagonism between the two. That said, art uses science a lot. But I don't have the impression that science is trying to use art. I see that there are a certain number of artists who pay attention to science. But there are few scientists who pay attention to art.