The different Sections are orientated towards training, experimentation and technical-technological production. The equipment (workshops and materials) is available to the different Options on the basis of specific projects, and their use is coordinated by the teachers and assistants. The Sections also have a productive function, and can be used by guest artists for creative purposes.
Equipment is made available by the technicians. Outside working hours, keys to the workshops are available at the reception upon the presentation of ID.
Printing Section
This is a place for teaching, experimentation and production. Projects are carried out by the students in all the different Options, with supervision by teachers. The structure is intended to give access to the tools needed for the conception and production of projects specific to the graphic arts. From digital techniques to offset and silk-screen, all the various forms of printing are objects of experimentation: painting, engraving, posters, books, CDs, pdf, etc.
As a forum for reflection and production, and the implementation of projects, the Printing Section is suited to various types of publication:
• graphics and pre-printing facilities, for the design and production of preparatory files using graphics software, scanners, printers, internet connections and data-processing equipment;
• an offset press, 70 x 100 cm format, monochrome/colour, with four-colour printing;
• two copperplate engraving presses (large and small formats);
• a lithographic press;
• silk-screen: four manual print tables with extractors, for printing on paper, and six tables for printing on fabric; 50/60 and 70/90 frames, a washing room, a room for insolation and one for drying frames; printing on paper and fabric. Inks (including water-based silk-screen ink) and other necessary products are stored in a technical facility beside the production centre.
The editing table, insolator and drying frames are the other components that enter into the printing process.
For the finishing stages, a 115 cm guillotine and a hardcover binding machine are available.
In parallel, there are regular visits by artists who produce multiples.
>>> artists' multiples [fr]
>>> Ne pas jeter sur la voie publique [fr]
>>> 165 235 [fr]
Photography Section
The focus of this section is on technical and theoretical teaching, but in its formal aspects it also maintains links with the school's educational structure as a whole. It gives non-specialist training in both silver-based and digital approaches to the image, its major concern being the quality of results. There is a member of staff who is responsible for teaching and technical orientations, and three assistants who take charge of management and general operations.
There is a studio with all the equipment needed for digital processes (from the acquisition of the image to large-format printing and the pre-printing stage), a silver-based unit for black-and-white, and all-format colour reproduction.
N Section
The N Section (N for "numérique", i.e. digital) comprises a grouping of audio, video, computing and network activities linked up by, and to, the teaching of what are commonly known as the "new technologies" of image and sound. The main objective is to develop a critical, theoretical and experimental familiarity with images and sound in movement, as well as exchanges within networks. Questions of production, distribution, spatialisation and interactivity are of central importance in the N Section. The teaching and practical work take place in seven collective spaces and a dozen individual work locations. The N Section functions in liaison with the other Sections and the different Options, notably in the framework of the "video" and "sound" studios. It is receptive, and attentive, to the preoccupations and requirements of student and artist alike.
Volumes Section
This section has several technical studios for production processes and the refining of specific techniques used in different projects. It is organised around a number of work spaces: a wood workshop, an earth and plaster workshop, a metal workshop, a resin workshop and a fusion and firing workshop.
The Volumes Section is a forum for learning. Courses, studios, workshops and individual guidance contribute to the teaching of technique, in all its complexity and precision, as it is expressed in particular projects.
The notion of techne is not approached from the viewpoint of the technician as such. Technique is seen, rather, as a working procedure, i.e. the intelligence behind an operation. Far from being a mere instrument for the realisation of an idea, technique is its essential underpinning.
The Volumes Section is organised around the ideas and processes that condition the students' work, right from the conceptualisation stage; and this constitutes a basis for the techniques involved in the materialisation of particular objects.
