Free Hybridizations
This collection, Free Hybridizations, is the fruit of a project carried out jointly in Personalized Support (AP) with the Terminale L students of lycée Amiral Ronarc'h, in Mme Aurélie Martin-Chrismann's class, and with the Applied Arts Upgrade (MANAA) students of lycée Vauban in Katell Lefèvre and Michel Thépaut's class, in Brest, during the 2014-2015 school year. It finds its origin in the study of one of the works in the Terminale L program: the collection Free Hands, by Man Ray and Eluard, published in 1937. For this collection, Man Ray's drawings preceded Eluard's poems, thus reversing the traditional relationship between texts and images. Our students walked in the footsteps of these two artists: the MANAA students created images on the theme of Man/Animal hybridization. The Terminale L students then wrote poems on these drawings, inspired by the surrealist approach: little or no punctuation, free verse, disconcerting images drawn from the sensations and feelings aroused by the drawings rather than from a reasoned and logical construction. In short: chance, random combinations, the underground work of the unconscious were preferred to any other approach. The goal was to appropriate the characteristics of the studied collection, understanding Eluard's style from within. Far from the very standardized and very demanding exercises of their baccalaureate exam, but mobilizing the same skills, the challenge was also to have fun creating, and to verify the accuracy of Lautréamont when he writes: "Poetry must be made by all. Not by one."! Finally, our collection Free Hybridizations also has a recipient external to our two establishments: it is Mr. Loïc Le Bail, Curator at the BNF in the Department of Prints and Photography. Last year and this year, he came to give our students a conference on the BNF, and another on Surrealism in Literature and the Arts, which was his research subject at the University of Paris III. May he be thanked here for the time he found for our students, and for the kilos of facsimiles he transported between Paris and Brest: the Minotaure journal, the Surrealist Revolution, and so many other wonders. "There are more wonders in an outstretched, eager hand than in all that separates us from what we love." writes Eluard in the Preface of Free Hands: thank you for this outstretched hand!
Brest, March 2015, Aurélie Martin-Chrismann, Katell Lefèvre, Michel Thépaut