EHESS x Camargo

The École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and the Camargo Foundation are joining forces to offer two residency grants to the Camargo Foundation for an artist (must reside abroad) and a social science researcher. This system aims to stimulate relations and exchanges between researchers and artists for the development of projects at the interface between the social sciences and all areas of the arts with a view to joint production.

  • About the partner +

    The École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), French Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities, brings together scholars and students from all over the world with the aim at bringing together all disciplines of social sciences and humanities to understand societies in all their complexity. Since its creation as autonomous institution in 1975, history, sociology, anthropology, economics, social sciences, philosophy, geography, literary studies, psychology and cognitive sciences are practised at EHESS in a permanent interdisciplinary dialogue. The institution hosts 40 research units organized around a field, an approach or, for the purpose of a third of them, a "cultural area". More than 800 teachers and scholars develop knowledge, train and supervise master's and PhD students and scholars. EHESS has a very important centre in Marseille.

    Learn more: www.ehess.fr

  • Eligibility +
    • The researcher must belong to a laboratory under the tutelage of the EHESS. In order to be eligible, the researcher must be affiliated to EHESS at the time of application and during the residency. 

    • The artist must be the principal creator of a new work or project. To be eligible, the artist must reside outside of France.

    • This program encourages applications by pairs that are already formed;

    • The jury will be particularly attentive to teams working in connection with the EHESS activities in Marseille (mainly the Allez Savoir Festival);

    • Particular attention will also be given to projects that resonate with the thematic axes that Camargo is currently developing around the future of our societies. Because of its geographical location at the heart of the calanques and facing the Mediterranean, but also because of its history of experimentation at the crossroads of disciplines, Camargo is today a place for sharing questions and knowledge, experimenting with new forms of encounters and thinking about possible futures. Candidates are free to interpret these axes in a very open way, the starting point being the horizon that opens up before one's eyes and invites the imagination to wander;

    • Priority may also be given to projects for which a cultural institution is approached for the production and/or distribution.

    • The first results of this collaboration should be presented at EHESS and Camargo during the residency. The collaboration may continue within other residency programs (e.g. the CRESS program at EHESS).
    • Projects selected in the framework of the EHESS CRESS program are eligible. 
  • Stipend +

    Each of the two residency grants will include: 

    •  For the artist: an allowance equivalent to one month of the visiting professors program (between 3,700 and 4,000 euros depending on the country of origin for a period of 28 days);

    •  For the EHESS researcher: only the reimbursement of expenses related to the residency (transportation if necessary, per diem).

    The hosting of the selected team at Camargo includes the provision of an apartment with a fully equipped kitchen and bathroom during the month of residence. Because of its location facing the sea and its relationship to the surrounding landscape, Camargo offers a setting conducive to research, contemplation and reflection. Work spaces include a library, an art and music studio (subject to availability), an outdoor theater, and informal shared spaces such as terraces and gardens.

  • Calendar

2023 Projects

Le Feu de la Baleine / Fabien Clouette and Jérémie Brugidou

Le Feu de la Baleine is a documentary film exploring the links between our coastal societies and large cetaceans. The choice to anchor this Art/Science site in the Basque Country is due to the local heritage as much as to its contemporary activities: once a hunting ground, the Basque coast is now home to several naturalist organizations forging privileged relationships with local colonies of cetaceans. We decided to call the film, The Fire of the Whale. Since the time of its intensive hunting, the whale has been a carrier of fire: its oil provided lighting and was a fundamental resource for the nascent industrialization. Today this fire has become above all symbolic and emotional: protected animal, “charismatic”, its presence as much as its absence moves and unites. From these masterful bodies seen or heard at sea to the dramatic corpses found stranded, passing through the reconstructed bodies exhibited in museums, we explore in this film the common history that we share with these animals with such a special status in our physical, imaginary and social worlds. We seek informal, scientific and cumulative knowledge to grasp this complex relationship between exploitation and fascination. At Villa Camargo, we will mainly work on the sound mixing of the film, in conjunction with bio-acousticians.