Map the Imagination

https://youtu.be/zIAwJ0QhWkg en français — a conference recorded at Les Champs Libres (Rennes, Brittany) in December 2023 in the framework of the serie "What stories for our time", moderated by Nicolás Buenaventura - writer-director and storyteller - and Yann Apperry - screenwriter, playwright and novelist. Stories build complex worlds in which we find ourselves projected. In the footsteps of the “Theory of the Rhizome”, imaginary as a space of co-elaboration, a space of proliferation of possibilities…With Bohdan Piasecki - Poet and Professor of Creative Writing, Nancy Murzilli - Philosopher and Literary Theorist, Anne Querrien - Sociologist and Urban planner and Manue Gaquère - Sports Teacher Extracts Anne Querrien « As Deleuze says so well in his book on painting in his lecture on Bacon: “Our imaginary is overrun with clichés, which we need to get rid of in order to create.” Mapping is another way of seeing the world, of following it, of philosophising... » Narrative: a flow story. In the teachings of Guattari or those of Lacan, creative workflows are highlighted that can be fluid, that "flow" but that can, very often get stuck. In French we say we "dry up". We "dry up" or get stuck during exams, we get stuck on a poem, we block in our writing. So, we use cheat sheets to avoid these blocks. Generally, cheat sheets aren't very useful, because it's more a question of flow. A mapping of the imaginary in the real. The imaginary needs to be put in its place. There are the flows of reality… There's the imaginary that, as Guattari says, creates existential territories. In fact, what we map out are certain real-life practices. And, if we're stuck in these existential territories, we don't create anything of interest, we create worthless stories, repetitive... Ritornellos. Reality to feed the imagination. Flow can take you beyond that, towards what Lacan calls: the symbolical. And what Guattari called: non-physical spheres. Which are music, maths, philosophy... all forms of collective human production, abstract collective productions. Guattari distinguished himself from Lacan, in saying all that draws on production, based on different technologies - the flow of successive technologies, machines which aren't just technological - as in mechanical, made of metal, but also social, produced by humanity over time, inherited by all. This is a quick resume but it's necessary to provide this framework, because I'm sort of wary of narrative set exclusively in the imaginary. As Deleuze says so well in his book on painting in his lecture on Bacon: “Our imaginary is overrun with clichés, which we need to get rid of in order to create.” And it's not that easy. Heritage is an essential part of the story. Regarding heritage, which is common to many, or for a family... for example, I have four sisters, we have the same family heritage, let's say. In fact, often sidestepping occurs due to outside influences, not of our own making. What bothers me is, that everyone talks of stories as if they're our own invention. For me they're forged collectively between me and outside events. Project the imaginary onto reality. Deligny, was born in 1913 his father was killed in the 1914 war. So, he grew up without a father and became an educator for the young, initially delinquents then for increasingly for difficult autistic kids. He spent his last years in the Cévennes, with a young lad called Janmari. And when Janmari was brought to him, he drove everyone crazy because he spun round and round screaming. The father was unknown, it was the mother who brought him, so Deligny took him to the Cévennes to live with him because at the psychiatric clinic, la Borde, although very open, where this young man was brought, who, I think, was 8 at the time, no one could cope with him, his spinning round screaming.  So, he goes to the Cévennes and is joined by a young man named Jacques Lin who he'd met near Paris,