PARIS GALAXIES
a Vision for the Greater Paris
 Future research about the making of the Great Paris in 2030

 An experimental project developed by LIID, attached to Institute ACTE (Sorbonne University),
awarded the Paris 2030 research grant (City of Paris)
in collaboration with Paris College of Art and emerging actors of the creative metropolis.
Designers’ Days 2013: Art, Design and Imagination Workshop

During the Designer’s Days 2013 which theme was « and Tomorrow… », PCA organized a research day dedicated to showing how Art and Design Schools contribute to the making of tomorrow’s imagination.
Guest professor of the day, philosopher Jean-Jacques Wunenburger (University Lyon 3) has produced many analyses about the three dimensions of imagination (imagery, imaginary, and imaginal), here highlighted by three research projects conducted at the school. Paris Galaxies art-based model of the urban galaxy, both theoretical and poetic, was chosen to highlight the imaginal dimension of both imagination and the city.
Different from the “imagery” which tends to produce mimetic representations (whether photographic or mental) of reality, and from the “imaginary” which, to the contrary, escapes realism to enter the world of fiction (whether narrative, mythological or fantastic), the imaginal tends to model reality and produce visions. Inspired by historical philosopher Henri Corbin who updated the notion of mundus imaginalis inherited from Persian philosophers, imaginal thought and production re-link imagination to knowledge to make reality intelligible, with the same ambition as science and academia. As a matter of fact, Paris Galaxies is a true experiment on how to hybridize both artistic and academic materials and practices.

 

- Designers’ Days 2013 program: http://www.paris.edu/pages/detail/772/

- Art and Education announcement: http://www.artandeducation.net/announcement/paris-college-of-art-tomorrow-imagine-the-role-of-design-schools/

- Paris Galaxies page on PCA website: http://www.paris.edu/pages/detail/806

 

Jean-Jacques Wunenburger on Wikipedia:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Wunenburger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_philosophers

 

This said, and as R. Bidault-Waddington enunciated it in the article « Paris Galaxy Inc.: A Conceptual model and holistic strategy toward envisioning urban development » published in the Parsons Journal For Information Mapping in 2012, the Paris Galaxies project was originally inspired by the “Poetic-Speculative Bubble”, a vast photographic installation she created in 2001.

This installation, that resembled a sky or a constellation of 800 urban photographs, has become the starting point for exploring other possible forms of representation of the Greater Paris area with images, such as online images collection and composition (See page “Image and Parties Prises“), or the research of artworks or artists’ visions.