The annual L'invention de l'Europe par les langues et les cultures chair was created in partnership with the French Ministry of Culture(Délégation générale à la langue française et aux langues de France).
Rooted in the semiotic perspective, i.e. the relationship between perception and meaning founded in every aspect, element and object that makes up everyday life, the content of the chair will be the creation of what might be called a cultural dream : to reflect on how to live together on this highly diverse continent. This year, the Chair's teaching will be devoted to theEuropean" semiosphere ", where everyday life is lived, where communication is based on an understanding of difference not as a separation, but on the contrary as a shared area within which we can identify, or rather, identify with otherness as a link. Curiosity as the aspiration to know what we don't yet know, rather than the hostility or indifference that rejects it or turns our backs on it.
In my work and teaching - by principle integrated - I have always cultivated the relationship between different fields of study, in a desire to engage disciplines or fields close to or more distant from those of my acquaintances, while avoiding superficial amateurism. From French studies I developed towards general and comparative literature, then turning to visual art, exhibition design and cinema. My main resources are narratology and semiotics, the combination of which has enabled me to carry out detailed analyses of cultural objects from a wide variety of sources, media, ideologies and periods. To better understand the contemporary world, I have also, over the last two decades, made films in two genres : socially relevant experimental documentaries and " theoretical fictions ". The former engage contemporary people, groups and situations ; the latter address masterpieces of cultural heritage, without however being " adaptations ", in order to develop socially relevant theoretical concepts. Some of these works will be shown in the seminars.
In my teaching, I will put these varied experiences and practices to work, with the aim of keeping European cultures alive in their diversity and changeability. I'll be experimenting, the results of which are never entirely predictable. I'll be devoting classes to the issues that both distinguish European countries from one another and, for that very reason, encourage debate and the subsequent amalgamation that is actually what creates Europe.
