© Musée du temps
Call for projects - Watchmaking, photography & intangible heritage
From December 9, 2019 to February 16, 2020: International Watch Museum, in collaboration with the Nuit de la Photo - La Chaux-de-Fonds / Time Museum - Besançon
Context and objectives
By the end of 2020, an important step in the safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) in the field of watchmaking and the mechanical arts could be achieved thanks to the registration of Know-how in mechanics watchmaking and artistic mechanics on the Representative List of UNESCO. This registration should not be an end in itself but a tool for deploying various safeguard and enhancement measures. The application to UNESCO aims precisely for this purpose. The application file can be consulted here (N°1560): https://ich.unesco.org/fr/dossiers-2020-en-cours-01053.
The prospect of this inscription is an opportunity for the watchmaking museums of the Jura Arc to look into the notion of intangible heritage, to think about how to document it and to confront it with the contexts and current issues of political cultural and economic. This is why the Besançon Time Museum (MDT) and the International Watch Museum of La Chaux-de-Fonds, in collaboration with the association Nuit de la Photo (MIH), intend to present a joint exhibition dealing with the question of the PCI through photography as a contemporary artistic production capable of proposing new and sensitive approaches to watchmaking heritage.
The objective is to highlight the intangible heritage to the general public through a temporary exhibition completely integrated into the permanent exhibitions of the museums and their material collections, to underline its inseparable nature with the ICH. The exhibition will open its doors at the end of 2020, in the context of the possible inclusion of know-how in watchmaking mechanics and artistic mechanics on the Representative List of UNESCO.
The exhibition also aims to invite the holders of know-how to reflect on the consequences of cultural and territorial policies and economic issues on their practice and on the reflection of their practice in the public space (image, discourse). In other words, photography will be questioned as a medium that can fossilize, if not a practice, at least its representation to the public.
In this perspective of questioning both ICH and photography as a vector of this ICH, the purpose will be to challenge the visitor on his own conception of intangible heritage, and on the biases that condition his perception. These biases were anchored in the collective imagination from the second half of the 19th century, when watchmaking was gradually established as a regional/national tradition (role of the hand, single man, silent, patient, modest, transmission of know-how by filiation).
The projects solicited from photographers must address this issue by distancing themselves from stereotypical representations and offering new approaches and perspectives on how to consider, show and promote watchmaking know-how on both sides. of the border. The objective of the call for projects is to testify to the diversity of the holders of know-how, in particular practitioners, and to relate the processes of transmission of knowledge, through an artistic work or an author’s documentary. Freedom of choice of subject is guaranteed. Photographers can nevertheless benefit from the support and networks of museums to appropriate the theme and get in touch with the depositories of this know-how.
An international jury made up of representatives from museums, the Nuit de la Photo, scientists and artists will select 6 photographers. A diversity of looks and photographic forms will be favored in the selection of the jury, just as increased attention will be paid to the cross-border nature of the subject.
The mandate of the candidates will be to take a series of shots (about twenty) all or part of which will be presented from November 2020 to November 2021 in the exhibition halls of the two museums, in forms to be defined in agreement with the photographers and the curators, to represent the intangible process of watchmaking creation and mechanical art and the diversity of actors involved in the transmission of knowledge and know-how.
Call for projects and conditions of participation
The photographer produces on a PDF document of about twenty pages, a file including:
- a biography summarizing his activity (max. 2 pages), his previous work with examples demonstrating his ability to undertake the treatment of a subject and the production of a series (portfolio max. 8 pages).
- an explanation of the planned project, on two pages, with images illustrating the project, or with images on another subject but with a similar approach (max. 8 pages).
The call for projects is open to professional photographers or photographers in training, without registration fees. The proposed project must imperatively be original and feasible within the time limits indicated. Only one project per participant is allowed. The jury’s decisions are final.
A jury will preselect and meet a maximum of 12 candidates. 6 of them at the most will finally be selected to carry out their project according to the criteria of artistic quality, originality in their ability to translate the subject and feasibility within the given deadlines.
Benefits
The 12 preselected candidates are paid up to €300/CHF to cover any travel expenses.
the 6 selected candidates are remunerated up to 12,000 €/CHF (maximum) each. This amount must cover all costs related to the realization of their project, the production of conservation prints (about twenty), the preparation of supports for the images selected for the exhibition and the reproduction rights in the exhibition catalogue. The selected candidates will also cede the rights of representation of their photographs to the two museums without any time limit. A first payment of €/CHF 5,000 is made when the prints are handed over, the second at the opening of the exhibition.
Some of the images of the nominees will be projected in the general framework of the 10th Nuit de la Photo de La-Chaux-de-Fonds in February 2021, at one or more times to be determined later. A catalog of the exhibition will also be published.
Published:
16 January 2020
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