Marjolaine Dégremont was born in Buenos Aires in 1957 and currently lives between Paris and the Marne region. Artist and activist, she is self-taught. His work deals with the relationship between Self, space, and the Other. It takes very diverse and labyrinthine forms with a constant autobiographical thread, processes which by themselves defend a great dimension of freedom.
Many of her projects have imagined intersections between sculpture, in situ intervention, sound installation, literature and political ideals. Her diverse production nevertheless forms a coherent whole, between abstraction and figuration, a constant coming and going between the Self and the Other, inside and outside, the architectural form and randomness.
Les Ateliers de l’Universel
“Les Ateliers de l’Universel” is an initiative launched by partners and actors working in relation to the “ExpoFrance” association, following the end of France’s candidacy project for the “2025 World Exhibition”, by the government in 2018. The aim is to open debates on the ‘values of universality’ and make proposals about the mobilization of the major universal and contemporary issues to reinvent a model of World Expo, that can be adapted to the values and challenges of the contemporary world.
“Financial crises, migratory tensions, the disruption of the environment, the race for technology or radicalization of ideologies must now encourage us, more than ever, to re-examine the values and issues that we share. It is imperative for the world, if we do not want it to retract or lose its sense of diversity which underlies its richness”,
Jean-Christophe FROMANTIN
President of Ateliers de l’Universel
One goal: to put the Universal back into public debate
In this context, it is time to put forth the values of audacity, sharing, of universality and innovation. There are challenges on the ecological, migratory, technological, and urban levels: the world thinks today as a whole: “Think Global but Act Local”. We often share the same products, the same services, the same brands, the same points. Our societies are standardized, and the same is so of our problems and challenges.
To share and re-share like-minded ideals, the prompting of essential questions about issues for our future, and to open debates which allow every person to contribute to it, are what “Les Atelier de l’Universel” (Workshops of the Universal) puts into play.
A series of concrete actions led by “Les Ateliers de l’Universel”
The association are revolving around four components:
- An online exchange platform “lesateliersdeluniversel.org” whereby many personalities and anonymous people may speak on the notion of the universal;
- A series of events, meetings and round table discussions organized in several countries, to discuss values and universal issues and to create propositions for action;
- A major international event called “Universal” to be held in Paris in 2019, at the Musée de l’Homme, which will bring together personalities and universes from four corners of the Earth, for the ‘imperativeness’ of universality, and forms of possible mobilization;
- Finally, a collection of writings made from and about the series of debates, and a ‘call for the universal’… giving a solution to this project, widely distributed at the end of 2019.
