Call for contributions

NEW TIMETABLE FOR THE EVENT : FROM MONDAY 3RD TO TUESDAY 4TH OF NOVEMBER, 2025

This scientific event aims to identify the contributions and limitations of sensitive experiences in the production of knowledge about uncertain spaces, drawing, among other things, on exchanges between arts and sciences.

These spaces are called uncertain because their material, ecological, and landscape characteristics are relatively undefined and (re)appropriable. In terms of land ownership as well as their use or social practices, these spaces have loosely defined boundaries. They result from unplanned, unintended processes (Gandy, 2016): margins, wastelands, interstices, vacant lots, neglected areas, in all types of territories (urban, rural, metropolitan, protected, etc.). The landscape dimensions of these uncertain spaces link them to ordinary landscapes or, to borrow Gilles Clément’s term, the third landscape (2004): they are “undecided” and their evolution is partly driven by non-human dynamics, left to nature. Although the term “landscape” is rarely attributed to them in everyday usage, they are also places of practice, appropriation, and transgression. Their uncertain nature is a matrix that allows for the deployment of multiple, sometimes unexpected, human and non-human appropriations.

The difficulties in grasping the complexity and dynamics of these spaces invite renewed approaches and tools, mobilizing sensitive and transdisciplinary methodologies, notably at the intersection of scientific and artistic fields. Encompassing the sensory, the signifying — the meaning attributed to lived experience — and the qualifying — the feeling, the affective relationship that it may produce (Manola, 2020) — the sensitive constitutes an inter-world that is scientific, artistic, operational, and pedagogical, aimed at interrogating the ordinary experience of places and uncertain spaces.

Sensitive experiences contribute to various modes of formalizing knowledge about these spaces. They participate in the development of tools and experimental methods (Di Bartolo & Bonin, 2024), for example through the hybridization of artistic and scientific practices. Sensitive experiences foster the novel formalization of situated narratives by revealing realities that are little visible, invisible, or conflictual. While this conference aims to contribute to arts-science dialogues, it also seeks to integrate lay and everyday approaches to the sensitive, made possible, for instance, by landscape approaches (Luginbühl, 2007), sensory ecology (Sordello, 2024), ecocriticism (Posthumus, 2017; Breteau, 2022), or ecosomatic practices (Clavel, Ginot & Bardet, 2019). At the crossroads of the humanities, social sciences, life sciences, design, and the arts, this conference sets out to interrogate the modes of knowledge production about uncertain spaces, following three non-exclusive axes:

Axis 1: Human – Non-human Relations in Uncertain Spaces

As habitats for diverse species and living spaces for different social groups, uncertain spaces are heterogeneous and hybrid places (Gandy, 2013) where ecological and social dynamics intersect. They often feature significant plant and animal diversity and constitute constantly evolving environments (Bonthoux et al., 2014; Muratet et al., 2021). However, their temporary status and informal character make them the subject of projects by certain territorial actors, raising questions about the effects on relations woven with the ecology of the places. In contexts where ecosystem preservation, heritage protection, and urban and economic development often clash, how do these indeterminate spaces embody singular relations of interdependence between human and non-human beings? How does the sensitive experience of these uncertain spaces contribute to forms of mediation (Berque, 2000) or experiences of new ecological and social links?

Axis 2: Experiencing Uncertain Spaces Collectively

Uncertain spaces present a multiplicity of forms and dynamics (social, urbanistic, ecological, landscape, etc.) that make them difficult to define. Collective experiences, including site walks (Careri, 2020) or in situ performances, allow different actors to cross perspectives or even construct a shared viewpoint to foster a plural understanding and production of these places. Since 2019, the Inter-friches research network has been organizing interdisciplinary and international workshops to create cross-perspectives among researchers and promote plural thinking (Rochard et al., 2021). The experiential and collective approach to these spaces is understood as an opportunity for encounter. Does sharing sensitive experience provide an occasion to lower sectoral and disciplinary boundaries to hybridize practices, knowledge, and test new hypotheses? How and in what ways do crossings between scientific and artistic perspectives enrich these sensitive experiences?

Axis 3: Producing a Critical Narrative on Uncertain Spaces

In the competitive context of development and, more broadly, neoliberal production of spaces, uncertain spaces may reveal forms of conflict between actors, logics of socio-spatial relegation, and lead to the production of new margins (Vallet, 2022; Babou, 2023). In urbanization and metropolitanization processes, these spaces alert and open debate on the social and political stakes of urban production and normalization, notably through their materialization in landscapes (Davodeau, 2023; Mattoug, 2021). So-called “participatory” prefigurations contribute to developing alternative scenarios for territories (Berger, 2014). The question of the temporality of these spaces reveals power relations and forms of precarity. While they testify to territorial history from the viewpoint of collective memories and inherited social practices, they are also planning issues. Sensitive apprehension and investigation of uncertain spaces can contribute to developing new narratives about the ecological and social consequences of territorial transformations and the emergence of new social and ecological vulnerabilities. From this perspective, what traces should be collected and reported? And in what forms should they be given to confer transformative power over existing power relations? Finally, how does the hybridization of scientific and sensitive practices allow questioning the possible futures of uncertain spaces by creating, for example, alternative scenarios? How can both individual and collective experiences be narrated, and in what forms can the effects of the mutations characteristic of these uncertain spaces be exhibited?

Contribution modalities

All formats (oral presentation, poster, exhibition, performance, sound or video broadcast, etc.) are welcome in response to this call. A summary of up to 4000 characters (including spaces, excluding bibliography) should specify the research question, the intended format, and its alignment with one of the axes. For contributions including a non-textual or artistic component, it is possible to attach links to online documents or a PDF file. Please specify any specific material or technical requirements when submitting.

Dissemination

Beyond the conference to be held on Novembre 3rd and 4th, 2025, the objective of this scientific event is to produce a collective volume to be published in 2026. Contributors interested in publication are invited to indicate this in the summary as well as the envisaged formats or media (written chapter, creative writing, photographic series, montages, drawings, etc.). The creation of a digital platform to disseminate content not editable in the volume is also planned.

A collective site walk of an uncertain space in Clermont-Ferrand will allow the conference to become, for a moment, a shared sensitive experience. The valorization of this encounter will be developed collaboratively during a workshop held at the conference focusing on dissemination formats and initial editorial choices.

📅 NEW DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS : 11th of July 2025