Centre Culturel de la Providence x Rencontre Art & Science OVNi

Social Humanities: Performing the Public Space Between IRL and URL

How do digital arts and cultures « perform » the social body today? The aim is to explore the tension between a body that is increasingly quantified, captured, or confined to a digital interface, and a political body attempting to reassemble itself, build community, and reclaim the shared space in the face of the world’s automation. This gathering is a way to question what remains alive and shared in our ways of living together, considering the staging of the self and an ecology of bodies in public space.

Filipe Vilas-Boas is at the heart of this question with his performative installation Re:public, created for the 2026 OVNi Biennale. He will share his experience on art as an « agora » and a playful « Trojan horse » to awaken citizenship. Laurence Allard approaches the attempt to reclaim public space through the concepts of « situated knowledges » and engagement. Can art mend the social fabric where social networks tend to fragment bodies?

Speakers:

Filipe Vilas-Boas, associate artist at the 2026 OVNi Biennale

Conceptual artist, his works play on the porosity and affinity between two public spaces: one belonging to the digital sphere, the other to the physical world.

Laurence Allard

Semiologist, sociologist in Communication Sciences, researcher at the Institute for Research on Cinema and Audiovisual (IRCAV), teaches at the University of Lille, Cultural Studies and Media Department. She co-leads the AI Observatory (created in 2025).