After tracing Pascal Ferren’s trajectory and the genesis of his dispositifs — from the Parlement de Loire to Mission Relations in the first part of the interview with Patrick Degeorges — this second part focuses on a decisive question: that of the artistic posture.
Why intervene as an artist when one works on a daily basis with local authorities, technicians, scientists, and public institutions? What does this position make possible in terms of legitimacy, freedom of action, and economic frameworks? And how can we think, beyond status, about practices that are genuinely capable of transforming territories, institutions, and our relations with the living world?
Through this discussion, the interview explores the concrete conditions of transformative practices: funding models, forms of commissioning, long temporalities, evaluation issues, transmission, and collective structuring. It also questions what constitutes a work today, when art no longer produces only objects, but also relationships, scenes of dialogue, and experiences capable of durably modifying ways of acting.
Patrick Degeorges
In the first part of the interview, we were able to discover your trajectory and your practice, and the line of work that has gradually taken shape at the intersection of politics, mediation, and institutions. This brings us back to a central question: that of the artistic posture. Why intervene as an artist rather than as a philosopher, urbanist, or researcher, especially when you work with technicians and administrations? What does this position change in terms of legitimacy and freedom of action?
Pascal Ferren
Between us, I’m going to say something slightly provocative: in my view, I am doing philosophy. That is what I was trained in, and I continue to practise it, but in a situated and practical way, with local authorities. I engage in conceptual distinction, methodological invention, translation between worlds — all of this fully belongs, for me, to philosophical work.
But socially, philosophy is now perceived in a very particular way. If I tell the director of parks and gardens in Montpellier that I have come to do philosophy, he will think of Bruckner or Onfray on CNews. That image has become inoperative, even toxic. French philosophy has largely been captured by reactionary spheres that allow themselves to speak about everything, often to say anything at all.
I situate myself elsewhere: philosophy as a slow practice of reading, translation, and relation-making — not as the production of opinions. I believe far more in practice than in commentary.
In this context, the figure of the artist is far more operative. It authorises experimentation, error, translation, even strangeness. The artist has the right to be odd, to propose dispositifs, to open scenes, without claiming to deliver definitive truths. It is a much more fertile posture for what I do.
Patrick Degeorges
On our side, at HIEPA, we have tried to bypass these categories by speaking of practitioners. A technician is a practitioner, a baker too: all are engaged in a praxis, a way of transforming reality. Perhaps that is where a common language can emerge, beyond the identities of artist, researcher, or philosopher.
Pascal Ferren
I agree, but institutional and economic frameworks matter. The Érable programme, for example, is a researcher–artist programme, not a researcher–practitioner one. That determines funding, spaces of action, and, very concretely, the possibility of making a living.
Patrick Degeorges
Indeed, after Mission Relations, you also became involved in Érable, which brings together artists, researchers, and local authorities to produce new narratives around biodiversity.
Pascal Ferren
Yes! I see Érable as a set of possible fields, particularly for Mission Relations. The latter also benefits from annual funding from the OFB over three years, which is extremely valuable: it allows us to work over time, to produce tools, forms, and action-research. It is not a large budget — I only receive part of it — but it provides a foundation.
Then, to test certain actions on a larger scale, such as interspecies territorial negotiation, other resources are needed. For example, with Érable we are setting up a “Procès du sel ” in the Camargue: a large-scale form of territorial negotiation. Here we are talking about projects of around €150,000, even if, once costs, VAT, research expenses, and so on are deducted, much less remains. But it allows us to build attempts anchored in reality, with the time and attention they require.
What I mean is that complex institutions cannot be transformed through permanent makeshift solutions. Processes take time. With the Lez–Mosson river basin authority in Montpellier, we have been working for four or five years. Only now are we beginning to discuss integrating sensitive approaches into the SAGE. Without funding, without continuity, this would be impossible.
So we assemble bits of cultural funding (Montpellier 2028, for example), research calls, partnerships with scientists. It is a fragile economy, but one that allows us to endure over time and to give real depth to the transformations undertaken.
Patrick Degeorges
If we were to rethink commissioning today — public or otherwise — in order to make such approaches possible, what would need to change? What would characterise, in your view, a commission truly adapted to transformative practices?
Pascal Ferren
I have shifted my position on this question. I believe we should no longer start from culture, but from transformation. If I were to design a territorial funding programme today, I would call it “transformative practices”, not “culture”. The decisive issue is not status — artist, researcher, designer, urbanist — but what people are concretely trying to transform: structures, organisations, ways of inhabiting a territory, relationships between humans and environments.
From this perspective, hybrid dispositifs — researcher–artist, researcher–practitioner — are very fertile. But we need to go further: many practitioners of public dialogue, territorial engineering, and work psychosociology develop transformative practices just as powerful as those of artists. They should be able to access the same frameworks of support.
What matters are frameworks of action that are sufficiently open and sufficiently long-term. Six-month commissions or highly standardised calls for projects are necessary — we have to engage with them, because that is how the world works — but they are not enough. If we want to create spaces for research, invention, and testing, we also need formats such as workshops, laboratories, or residencies, where failure, repetition, and refinement are allowed.
There are very concrete conditions here: to work seriously with a group, one sometimes simply needs a few days freed up, a place, and people who are paid. Without this, the collective production of forms and concepts cannot take place.
Patrick Degeorges
What you are saying also raises the question of moving beyond permanent makeshift solutions. If the aim is indeed to bring forth new forms of institutions from these practices, how can they be given a real, public, and durable existence? Should they be conceived as instituting fictions, or as institutions in their own right to be brought into being?
Pascal Ferren
It is a very strong tension. Some say to me: “You have resources, you produce effects — accept that this is already an institution.” I understand that argument. But I remain cautious with declarations of intent. I need institutions to be described through concrete forms: programmes, modes of operation, places, temporalities. Without that, I do not know what I am defending.
I deeply believe in experimentation — in the idea of the laboratory, the workshop, of dispositifs that test institutional hypotheses. Perhaps at some point, when these forms have been tried and tested, they can be established as institutions in their own right. But not before.
Patrick Degeorges
As I see it, the issue is not only symbolic. It is about making visible and operative alternative modes of governance, training, research, and relationships with environments. About creating a shared framework that allows initiatives that are currently dispersed to recognise one another, to cooperate, and to produce a real political effect. An institution, ultimately, is also a milieu: a set of relationships, memories, protections, and possibilities.
Pascal Ferren
Yes, but that milieu has to be funded. There needs to be an economic strategy. Whether through major funders, the pooling of resources, or hybrid forms, the question is unavoidable.
That is also why the figure of the artist remains operative: it allows access to certain funding streams. But precarity must not become an alibi for avoiding the places where decisions are made. We must continue to seek commissions, even imperfect ones, so that these practices can exist materially.
Patrick Degeorges
What I advocate is not a single, centralised institution, but a network of already active sites that pool their projects, resources, and imaginaries. Each place would retain its singularities, but certain projects — a school, a research programme, a training dispositif — would become commons carried collectively. By presenting themselves in this way, as a structured milieu, new forms of funding and recognition could emerge.
Pascal Ferren
I agree with the principle. But I also see the conflicts that this type of network can generate: rivalries, ideological divergences, governance issues. I have known structures that aspired to be federative and never managed to become so.
There are, however, interesting counter-examples: organisations such as La 27e Région have succeeded in federating practitioners and producing commissions without relying on a heavy central structure. These are inspiring models — but difficult to replicate.
Patrick Degeorges
There may also be a generational dimension. When one reaches a certain stage of maturity, one senses that the ambitions one carries can no longer be achieved alone. New collective forms then have to be invented — not to define oneself, but to be able to act differently.
Pascal Ferren
That is possible. For my part, I am still at a moment where I need to carry my own forms, to develop them fully. Perhaps later on, I will find myself elsewhere again.
Patrick Degeorges
The difficulty is that our practices are micropolitical: they invent locally, through situated dispositifs. Yet as soon as we try to turn them into institutional innovations, they risk losing their power. How can we produce commons without neutralising what gives these inventions their strength?
Pascal Ferren
For now, I prefer to deepen this micropolitics. I can clearly see the forces that tend to neutralise collective structures, and I try to resist them at my own scale.
Patrick Degeorges
But then, how can we ensure that what is produced in places like the Camargue, the Loire, or elsewhere continues to live on after you leave? What remains of these experiences?
Pascal Ferren
This is where I may be more modest — or more radical. I intervene, I help to create forms, dispositifs, frameworks. But I do not belong to the territories where I work. At some point, those who live there have to take ownership of them. What I leave behind are points of leverage, structures, narratives; their future no longer belongs to me.
Patrick Degeorges
Do you reflect on the idea that, when one is an artist, one’s posture can influence territorial effects? For example, a performance like The procès du sel mobilises local actors, but you are not necessarily responsible for what follows. If your objective is to produce a territorial effect, then the intervention must be conceived in such a way that it can be taken up, extended, and produce concrete effects on the territory.
Pascal Ferren
Yes, of course. But I do not necessarily think in terms of a reproducible model. My aim is to create a fertile source of experiences. People witness situations that make them think and act differently. With The procès du sel , for example, some participants appeared deeply affected…
Patrick Degeorges
Could you explain in more detail what The procès du sel is?
Pascal Ferren
It is a format for public debate. The idea is to recreate instituted scenes of negotiation, because traditional public debate is often of poor quality. I use the dramaturgy and scenography of a courtroom: it is not a real trial, but it creates an arena for listening.
In the Camargue, with Bipolar and Raphaël Mathevet, we brought together farmers, livestock breeders, reserve managers, and representatives of rice growers. These actors, who are often in conflict within conventional forums, are here able to present their points of view without polemics. The aim is to reveal alliances and everyday practices of mutual aid: for example, livestock breeders who use nature reserves, or scientists who support rice growers.
I focus on the scenography and the territorial narrative. The participants experience cooperation and listening, but I do not provide any “after-sales service”: I offer a form that creates fertile conditions, and then it is up to the actors to take hold of it.
Patrick Degeorges
So, to produce this kind of effect, there is a whole preparatory process: identifying relevant actors, organising the scenography, documenting the process in order to retain a trace of the experience — is this a form of inquiry?
Pascal Ferren
Exactly. But above all, a good work must be fertile. That is the principle I apply to my work. I do not seek to convince or to have my approach reproduced: I want to trigger experiences and moments of awareness.
The art of relations is about creating situations in which understanding emerges through form. Aesthetics play a central role: a “shock” or a singular encounter allows participants to perceive issues differently. For example, in the Camargue, a livestock breeder told me about his relationship with animals through memories from his childhood. This enabled me to understand his point of view and his practices deeply — a form of learning that would be impossible to achieve through speeches or lectures.
Patrick Degeorges
That is precisely the principle of transformative practices: creating the conditions for experiences that produce a before and an after, shifts in perception and attitude.
Pascal Ferren
Yes, and that is why I sometimes speak of an “art of relations”. Citizen participation is not a science or an engineering discipline: it is an artistic discipline. It is discontinuous, sometimes surprising, but it is precisely within this discontinuity that new forms of understanding and transformation emerge.
I remain very modest about the effects: I aim for transformation, but I cannot guarantee it. I propose a scene, an experience, and then what participants take from it depends on them and on the context.
Patrick Degeorges
This naturally raises the question of evaluation. Classical criteria, centred on the artwork, are not sufficient. For transformative practices, we need to think in terms of relational criteria: did the approach produce effects on the territory, on interactions, on understanding? Who needs art, and for what purpose?
Pascal Ferren
Exactly. I have been surprised to see that, even within artistic scenes, many people continue to evaluate only the artwork and to confine art to the object. When I present Mission Relations, some still ask me: “But where is the artwork?” One has to explain that it is a work of social transformation, a work on relations.
This relates to a long history of process-based art, with Fluxus, Joseph Beuys… Since the 1960s, these practices have existed, but they often remain poorly understood within contemporary institutions. The challenge is therefore twofold: to create fertile dispositifs and to have modes of action recognised that are not measured by the standards of a conventional artwork.
Patrick Degeorges
This is an issue we address within the framework of transformative practices: we need to think about time. The focus is not on producing an artwork, but on acting on relations. This is an essential point.
Pascal Ferren
Yes, and there are texts that explain this very clearly. Michaux, in L’art à l’état gazeux (1992–93), defends the idea that the approach itself becomes central in contemporary art. Nathalie Heinich, in The Triple Game of Contemporary Art (Le triple jeu de l’art contemporain, sociology of the visual arts), was writing the same thing twenty years ago. Yet this is still not a given: in certain sectors of the visual arts, there remains a very outdated vision.
Evaluation remains a complex issue. For The procès du sel , we set up an evaluation conducted by a sociologist and an ecologist: pre- and post-event questionnaires, followed by focus groups at six months, one year, and two years. This makes it possible to identify transformative effects. But I have never read the questionnaire or been more involved in the evaluation; it is not my role to evaluate myself.
Patrick Degeorges
Do you provide feedback or engage with participants in a logic of co-construction?
Pascal Ferren
Yes, partially. For example, with Rassemblez-Lez, we are still in contact today. About a month ago, in Montpellier, I ran into the president of the CLE (Local Water Commission). He told me about one of their resolutions: to begin all local water commission meetings with a poetic text. It is anecdotal, but interesting — it shows that certain actions can have long-term effects. Quantifying or measuring their impact, however, remains delicate.
Patrick Degeorges
One could consider that evaluation focuses on the ability of institutions to take up certain proposals and integrate them into their practices.
Pascal Ferren
Yes, but that remains difficult to measure. For me, evaluation is a practice in its own right, close to social science. I argue that it should be carried out by specialists, not by the artist themselves. This is what happened with The procès du sel : the evaluation was conducted by others, independently of my work.
Patrick Degeorges
This is crucial if we want to intervene beyond a merely “recreational” artistic field. Credible evaluation is an essential element in legitimising work on the ground. Fictional approaches to evaluation could even be explored.
Pascal Ferren
I am open to all of that. Evaluation is necessary, but it is a complex endeavour that cannot be reduced to a questionnaire. It requires resources comparable to those of the project itself.
Patrick Degeorges
Within the network we are building, we could imagine forms of mentorship or companionship to collaborate on evaluation. Skilled individuals could propose methodologies, observe, and analyse without intervening in the creation itself. This would legitimise and structure the field of transformative practices.
Pascal Ferren
Yes, and this is a recurring problem: having to legitimise each project anew. The procès du sel is a good example. At the beginning, many people are doubtful; at the end, they acknowledge that it works. But each new project starts again from zero. There is a real fatigue linked to this constant need for justification.
Patrick Degeorges
This question of legitimacy connects to that of skills. It is important to recognise what each person knows how to do — and what they do not. That is how effective collectives can be structured, with each person contributing their specific expertise.
Pascal Ferren
Exactly. In my projects, I work with a producer who handles most of the logistical and administrative work. He receives a large share of the funding, and rightly so: he does what I do not know how to do. Healthy, clear, and transparent collaborations are absolutely necessary. It is important to specialise without falling into the opposite excess. One must know what one can do and what one cannot do. Respecting each person’s skills is fundamental.
Patrick Degeorges
In working on this emerging field, it is useful to create collective dispositifs: documentation, evaluation, training, transmission. These elements legitimise the field and make it possible to structure a network of companionship. The aim is to produce a shared, complementary, and credible field around transformative practices — or, as I prefer to call them, transformative humanities.
Pascal Ferren
Yes, provided that the skills of each person are clearly distinguished. Specialisation is necessary to avoid dilution and to maintain the effectiveness of the collective.
Patrick Degeorges
The challenge is to compose with the skills, interests, and capacities of each person in order to create a shared field. We are not only talking about economics or production: we are talking about structuring a genuine network of transformative practices, with clear and complementary roles.
Pascal Ferren
Exactly. One cannot do everything alone, but one must find a balance between specialisation and collaboration. Each person must be recognised for their specific skills, which strengthens collective effectiveness.
Patrick Degeorges
Finally — and we can conclude on this note — thank you for this conversation. What could be useful would be to keep one another informed about our respective experiences, to share documents and proposals, and to create a network in which each person can contribute according to their skills, without dilution or redundancy. This type of companionship makes it possible to develop a structured and credible field around transformative practices.
