In collaboration with Guillaume Hutzler
Art - science - society - territories residency supported by SIANA, an artistic laboratory in Essonne and the southern Paris region - Exhibition as part of the Biennale En Commun(s)

C'est avant tout une lente fabrique de bois is an artistic residency located at the heart of the University of Evry Paris Saclay, bringing together visual artist Karine Bonneval and teacher-researcher Guillaume Hutlzer from the IBISC laboratory. From September 2024 to March 2025, a research laboratory/artist's studio has been set up at IBGBI. A place where the artist and scientist could work together, it was continuously visible and open to students and outsiders, including schoolchildren, for meetings and workshops.
This collaboration gave rise to the artistic installation on ecological issues presented here.

A scientist at INRAe PIAF, the laboratory with which Karine Bonneval has been collaborating since 2018, has developed a non-intrusive tool that measures in real time the variations in dilation of a branch: the Pépipiaf. Minute by minute, the tree gives us its reactions to the weather, the time of day and the season. These measurements give us the “pulse” of the tree in its own temporality, slower than that of humans. They tell us its circadian rhythm, the way it grows and reacts to the elements. Pépipiaf can also measure wind speed, soil humidity and solar radiation in the tree's immediate environment.

Using the data transmitted by the Pépipiaf, Karine Bonneval creates four installations based on the elements earth, water, air and light. These installations, a kind of costume, are to be experienced physically, by curling up in them, putting them on and putting them on. You'll be able to feel the variations of the tree as a function of light, wind, hygrometry and circadian rhythms. Above all, it's a slow wood factory that makes this data perceptible to our sensibilities, in a permanent vibration, in opposition to our way of seeing trees. We think of them as stable and almost immutable, whereas they are fragile and sensitive, in constant palpitation. The four creations allow us to feel these vibrations, to enter into communion with this breath, to breathe in concert with the connected tree.

These hands-on installations can give rise to performative interpretations: dance improvisation to the rhythm of the movements, or a practical workshop on movement and breathing in tune with the tree's “pulse”.

*based on a quote by Francis Ponge