Sébastien Pluot

Sébastien Pluot is an art historian, researcher, curator and co-director of Art by Translation (École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts Paris-Cergy and École Supérieure d’Art et de Design TALM-Angers). He has curated exhibitions and organised symposiums on the work of Alison Knowles, Mel Bochner and Christopher D’Arcangelo, as well as group shows including Art by Telephone Recalled, Time Capsules 2045, The Intolerable Straight Line, Dernières Nouvelles de l’Ether, Une Lettre Arrive Toujours à Destinations, Double Bind and Arrêtez d’Essayer de Me Comprendre. He has been a guest lecturer at Barnard College, CalArts, CUNY, Terra Foundation Summer Residency, SFAI and Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne. He has also lectured at international symposiums at Columbia University, University of Florida, NYU, Princeton University, RedCat, LACMA, Centre Georges Pompidou, Jeu de Paume, INHA and HEAD Geneva, among others. In 2023 he was curator for the HISK programme for advanced studies and practice-based research in visual arts, in Brussels. He is currently a PhD candidate at Centre André Chastel and researcher-in-residence at the Centre d’Astroparticules & de Physique Cosmologique in Paris.

Traditional Japanese culture, which exists alongside ultra-modernity, possesses extraordinary aesthetic responses to the unexpected; a remarkable capacity to accommodate the uncontrollable and the unpredictable. Sébastien Pluot’s research addressed various symbiotic relations with living beings and objects which imply that we negotiate with contingencies rather than domesticate and control events. Boro and kintsugi are examples of these dispositions, as is selective fermentation by micro-organisms. The purpose of this research was to identify possible responses to environmental and climatic crises, which coincide with a crisis of sensitivity, and a lack of empathy and consideration for places, object and beings.