What do we have to give up today? Can art go on strike? Run away again, but to where? Desert or resign? What might an eco-pedagogy look like? These are just some of the questions that will agitate the 2023 edition of the School of Impatiences, the new formula of the Diep~Haven festival.

We’ll be back on the summer schedule, offering events and encounters outdoors on the lawns of the Château de Dieppe, as well as an evening of screenings at Dieppe Scène Nationale. With the term “school”, we intend to follow in the long line of schools invented by artists, which have sought to renew modes of transmission and propose alternative forms of teaching, as well as to build community and develop networks of friendship and solidarity. We also understand the term “school” as a place where participants are active.

On May 11, 2022, the video of eight students’ speeches at the AgroParisTech school of agronomy’s graduation ceremony went viral. In announcing their decision to renounce the professions for which they were now trained, these students attacked their school and the agro-industry behind it, politicizing their “defection” from these structures, while encouraging their peers to do the same. “Now you can branch out”, the young agricultural engineers concluded. More recently, other students have expressed their refusal to make a career out of an uncritical relationship with technology. Across France, collectives are trying to build meeting points for fugitives. From the Zad de Notre-Dame-des-Landes to architecture and agronomy schools, initiatives are multiplying to open up horizons for potential dropouts.

In De l’esclavage au salariat, philosopher and economist Yann Moulier Boutang shows that one of the main driving forces in the history of capitalism is the fixation of a constantly fugitive labor force, “the incessant reconquest of the landless peasant, the nomadic gypsy, the runaway apprentice, the deserting soldier, the runaway slave, the incorrigible vagabond and all those who resist discipline”.  According to the désert’heureuses collective – a group of dissident engineers – running away is no longer simple desertion, but a new strategy of struggle. “Desertion is not so much a defeat as a way of getting rid of the gregarious element within us”, writes Dénetem Touam Bona in his recent essay Sagesse des lianes. To flee is not to put oneself on the run, but on the contrary to make the real flee, to operate an infinite number of variations to thwart any embargo (slide to read more).

Deserting, renouncing, forking out, resigning, running away, in times of ecological upheaval, now appears to be one of the most elaborate responses of our time, and the invention of a grammar for future times. So, for the 2023 edition, we are inviting artists, philosophers, filmmakers, poets, writers, musicians, architects, farmers, etc. to explore different formats for encounters. These open encounters, usually held outdoors, are designed to broaden the scope of encounters with art, literature and contemporary thought. Participatory meeting formats (participatory workshops, plant walks, assemblies, lecture-performances, literary performances, etc.) will be favored alongside more traditional meetings (lectures, readings, round tables). Among these, the Rotule collective will open this edition with a concert whose central motif will be the fall.

Philosopher Alexandre Monnin will pose the question of how to politicize renunciation. Herbalist Clémence Hollemaert will take you on a botanical stroll in search of edible wild plants in Dieppe. Philosopher Patrice Maniglier will propose a reading club based on a classic text by Kant, for a “terrestrial” cosmopolitics. Artist Paula Valero Comin will propose an “ecofeminist constituent assembly” for non-adults, a space for teenagers to express themselves, in collaboration with the Foyer Duquesne social center. Architect Xavier Wrona will propose a workshop on collages of urban imaginaries, asking what it would be like to follow the Zadist slogan “ZAD everywhere” to the letter. Author Stephanie Garzanti will offer a workshop on inclusive writing, working on the pronouns we use.

Author Corine Morel Darleux will help us think about how to create a “wilderness of our own”, a place where we withdraw from all human contact. We’ll take a look back at the experimental pedagogies of the 70s, but also at open-air pedagogies. We’ll take a closer look at experimental ecological and animist cinema, in the presence of poet and filmmaker Elio Della Noce. Artist Rose Mahé Cabel crosses worlds and transforms into an arachnid creature for a performance. Artist Catherine Radosa takes us to a place of resistance to urbanization and the devastating appetites of the megalopolis. Simona Dvorák & Tadeo Kohan seek to weave new narratives in Dieppe by inviting participants to contribute their own stories in the form of texts, poems, music, archives and objects linked to Dieppe’s history (political, family, personal).

Philosopher Paul Guillibert looks at how living things are put to work, while Fatima Ouassak explores the idea of a pirate ecology, from the perspective of working-class neighborhoods. Philosopher Mohamed Ahmed Meziane will show us that it’s not enough to attribute a spirit to plants and animals to heal the ravages of extractivism. We also need to listen to the dragons and subterranean beings who play a central role in the living traditions that inhabit this land.
The School of Impatiences is a school without walls and without prior registration, open to all and for all. The School of Impatiences places at the heart of its project our contemporary impatience, the impatience that demands that we face up to climatic, social and cultural challenges.
Our impatience to face up to urgency.

Alyosha Imhoff & Kantuta Quirós