Par nos propres efforts

What relationship, other than instrumental or “mastery”, can designers have with the techniques they use? What “ways of doing” do we cultivate when we consider technical cultures? And more generally, what constitutes technical culture today? These are the questions addressed by this edition. Questions that have animated the pedagogical research project “By our own efforts” led by Grégory Marion at the École Supérieure d’Arts Appliqués de Bourgogne (ESAAB) over the course of 2017-2018. Under the name taken from a Cuban publication of the 1990s, the restitution document articulates documentations of the study day that brought together Caroline Maniaque-Benton and Pierre-Damien Huyghe; reproductions of the corpus of publications of various natures that document and disseminate the technique gathered for the occasion – from Free Press to Manufrance catalogs to Youtube videos of “L’énergie Autrement”; and traces of two production workshops: one devoted to interpreting the grammar of Enzo Mari’s emblematic work “Proposta per un’autoprogettazione”, the other dedicated to making a transformation / fabrication device under the guidance of low-tech and energy autonomy activist Barnabé Chaillot.