On the rails of Cendrars

“In the beginning, there was Cendrars and his journey full of noise and fury along the rails of the Trans-Siberian and through a language that discords with the world. Then it was the eye, the lens that diffracted the gaze into so many visual flashes. There is no more arrival, only departures at full speed. There is no more poetry. There are no more photos. Something else emerges from their encounter. Open your eyes/ control the speed/ adjust the aperture/ let the light in!” G. Chauvin.

During the 2022-2023 school year, the Dr Koeberlé high school asked Stimultania to coordinate an artist/public creation time around the theme “Over-representation of self”. Stimultania then called on two photographers, Mathias Zwick and Mélanie Wenger, both members of the Inland cooperative, an innovative structure bringing together fourteen photographers. Following the creation time, the projects were exhibited, one within the high school and the other in the windows of merchants in the town of Sélestat. Following the success of the interventions for the 2022-2023 school year, the Dr Koeberlé high school decided to repeat the experience and once again entrust the coordination of the project to Stimultania.

In order to best respond to the high school's demand, Stimultania invites Guillaume Chauvin to bring the artistic intention to the 18 Terminale students specializing in History of the Arts around The Prose of the Trans-Siberian by Blaise Cendrars. The photographer intervenes in May 2024 for four days. Students are invited to explore Blaise Cendrars' text and the echoes that this evocation of youth in the 1910s can have on adolescents today. How do they understand this text? What images does it inspire in them? Do they recognize themselves in the questions raised by the author?

Graduated from the Higher School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg (now Hear), Guillaume Chauvin works as an author, photographer and editor, questioning the subjectivity of images and affirming his “documented point of view”. Established for a time in Russia, he has since published in the national and international press (Le Monde, Feuilleton, 6 Mois, Paris Match, Desports, Zut, Réponses photo). At the same time as this and his public interventions (Freeze frame, France culture, Le Mouv ', Amnesty international, Faculty of Versailles), he developed the work of a writer (Allia editions), and independent editor (Les éditions m' live). His works have been exhibited at the Rencontres d'Arles (Fr), at the Moscow Journalism Faculty (Rus), at the Stimultania (Fr) and Artnews project (Ger) galleries, at Ceaac (Fr), and acquired by the Artothèque from Strasbourg.