It all starts in a box - "Let's self-photograph!"

Faced with the fact that an ever-increasing number of very young students are dropping out of school in "sensitive" neighbourhoods, Cyril Achard, history teacher at the Collège Jean Vilar in La Courneuve, is trying to research, understand and put in place appropriate strategies to remedy the situation. This educational institution is in a ZEP (priority schooling area), located in the Grand Ensemble Ouest area (Cité de 4000 sud). Together with the management team, he is setting up an experimental structure at the heart of the school to renew enthusiasm for learning, targeting a group of students who are falling behind academically and rejecting the education system. Through a pedagogical approach, the workshops look to curb the process of illiteracy and school abandonment by promoting positive self-image and working on the "relationship with others" and with the community. The aim is to spark an appetite in these students, to challenge their passivity and to awaken their critical spirit in order to lead to an intimate reflection on their identity as students and teenagers, drawing attention to a skillset they may be unaware of.

Presentation : For many years I had wanted to create a "box" decor, prime example of a symbolic frame. In the context of this workshop, this “frame” was perfectly suited to our needs. For the photographic workshop, I proposed the making of a "box": the starting point of our experiments, a "container" space that we were able to make thanks to the help of Cathy Achard, an intervening visual artist. For the self-portraits in quick exposure, the students activate the hand-held shutter release by themselves. “Boxing” oneself: appropriating the surrounding space, positioning the body, experiencing physical tension and reaching an expressive emptiness to be "right here".

In a second step, we make silhouettes and introduce them into this space. Each student forges a relationship with this partner, either suspended or carried at arm's length. We then work with a long exposure time to develop movement. The impossibility of predicting in advance exactly what the result will be takes us to the core of the creative process: intuition, anticipation, expectation, wonder, chance... We discover the imprints of the arbitrary. Without premeditation, we, adults and students alike, are immersed in an authentic process of "creation", rich with exchange, trial and error, happy coincidences, and the desire to reach a concrete result "together".

The students are planning to participate in the Coucours du Jeu de Paume et de la DAAC on the concept of "Traces". We draw on the board a composition grid forming a sequence of 28 squares. Position, reposition, choose, eliminate: as proposals are made, windows open. In the search for an aesthetic and narrative balance, the grid comes to life, it becomes inhabited. The DAAC prize awarded to them is a real recognition for the students.