Category Archives: Discussion

Jean Starobinski was born in Geneva in 1920. He taught French literature at the universities of Johns Hopkins, Basel and Geneva, where he also gave lectures about the history of ideas and history of medicine. His books have enriched the views of several major works. He has also worked extensively on the contemporary poetic creation, as well as on the issues of interpretation. His essays on the art of the seventeenth century have become classics. His experience as a physician and psychiatrist led him to study the history of melancholy (including Trois Fureurs, 1974). In 2010, he entrusted his archives, consisting of over 40,000 books, at the Archives of the Swiss National Library. In 2012, he published L’Encre de la Mélancolie (Paris, Seuil), Accuser et séduire (Paris, Gallimard) and Diderot, un diable de ramage (Paris, Gallimard).

Doctor in Humanities, Gérard Régnier studied philosophy and history of art, first at the Sorbonne, then at the Harvard University (USA). In 1966, he was appointed curator of the Museums of France at the National Museum of Modern Art, then he joined the Georges Pompidou Centre from 1980 to 1989. In 1989, he was appointed chief curator of the heritage and director of the National Picasso Museum. It is also, under the name of Jean Clair, the author of monographs on Bonnard, Balthus, Cartier-Bresson, Duchamp, Giacometti, Music, Picasso, Szafran, and numerous essays and literary works. He is a regular contributor to the following journals: “Nouvelle Revue Française”, “Le Débat”, “Commentaire”, “La Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse”, “FMR”, etc.

Guillemette Bolens holds a Ph.D. in Medieval Literature from the University of Pennsylvania and a Doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of Geneva. She spent a year at Cornell University on a research fellowship. She taught Medieval English Literature as an assistant and “maître-assistante” before being appointed full professor at the University of Geneva in 2005. Her research interests are in the history of the body and corporeal logics in classical, medieval, and contemporary literatures. Her current research project focuses on kinesics and the analysis of gestures, postures, movements, and facial expressions in visual and verbal arts. This interdisciplinary project links the fields of narratology and rhetoric (in literature), gesture studies (in sociology and anthropology), action understanding (in philosophy and psychology), embodied cognition (in neuroscience), and kinesthetic semiotics (in dance theory).

Born in 1955 in Nancy (France), Pascal Dusapin studied Plastic Arts and Sciences, Arts and Aesthetic at the Paris-Sorbonne University. He followed the seminars given by Iannis Xenakis between 1974 and 1978, and was scholar at the Villa Medici in Roma (1981-1983). He has been conferred many honors since the beginning of his career, among them: in 1994, the Symphonic Prize of the SACEM; in 1995, the French Ministry of Culture awarded him the National Great Prize of Music and then the “Victoire de la Musique” was awarded to him in 2002 as “Composer of the Year”. He was awarded the 2005 Cino del Duca prize from the French Academy des Beaux-Arts. Raised to the rank of “Commandeur des Arts & Lettres”, elected at the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste in July 2006 and nominated professor at the College de France to hold the artistic creation chair for 2006/2007. He has composed many pieces for ensemble, for orchestra and mainly for soloists and chamber music.

Alumni of the art school of the Villa Arson in Nice, Jean Daviot uses video, photography and painting. In 1984, he created a fictional character: the artist Walter Pinkrops. In 1994, he produced “Ombrographies” taking impressions of faces and hands in photocopy – traces that he transfers to the canvas. In the 90s and 2000, in the same spirit of seeking recordings of presences, he identifies the contours of visitors of his studio and paints them in simultaneous contrasts (series of Visitors). Since 1995, he creates digital paintings “Ecritures de lumières”, where he uses a video camera as a brush.

Carlo Ossola is Italian literary critic, professor of Italian literature at the University of Geneva (1976-1982), Padua (1982-1988) and Turin (1988-1999). Since 2000, he is professor of modern literature of neo-Latin Europe at the College de France in Paris. He also leads the Institute of Italian Studies (ISI) at the University of Lugano and co-directs the review Lettere Italiane, as well as the Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa published at the Olschki editions (Florence). Carlo Ossola is the author of numerous books in French and Italian. Among his recent ones: Il continente interiore, Venise, Marsilio, 2010, and the edition, introduction and commentary of Dag Hammarskjöld, Jalons, Paris, Editions du Félin, 2010.

René Frydman was head of the department of obstetrics and gynecology and reproductive medicine from 1990 to 2010 at the hospital Antoine Béclère, Clamart, and head of the Consortium Woman Couple Embryo Child (2006-2011). He was the initiator of medically assisted procreation treatments in France. During his career, he was responsible of the research team unit INSERM 782 (2006-2010), director of education at the Faculty of Medicine PARIS XI and head of the medical project of the Bicêtre maternity hospital. He was also a member of the National Human Rights Committee (1987-1988), a member of the National Consultative Ethics Committee for Life Sciences and Health (1986-1990), and in charge of bioethics to the Minister of Health (1992). He participated in the perinatal plan in collaboration with the Secretary of State for Health (1997-1998) and was technical advisor for the Minister of Research (2001-2002).

Carmen Perrin is born in La Paz, Bolivia. In 1981, she graduates from Geneva’s Superior School of Fine Arts and in 1986 starts teaching in the institution. In 1993, she is given the Bourse Landys et Gyr scholarship so she can live and occupy an art studio for one year in London. Now, she lives and works in Geneva and regularly occupies an art studio in France. Since the 1980’s, Carmen Perrin established herself as a visual artist creating sculptures. In the 1990’s she started creating works increasingly related with architectural and landscape contexts. In 2005, she decides to stop teaching to dedicate herself entirely to her artistic research. She is currently working on projects related with public spaces and pursues in her studio a research in the close articulation between sculpture and drawing practices.

Alumni of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in philosophy, Alain Grosrichard taught in the Department of Psychoanalysis at the University of Vincennes, led by Jacques Lacan. He is now professor of French literature at the University of Geneva and president of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Society. He published numerous works on Rousseau and the Enlightenment, including Structure du sérail, la fiction du despotisme asiatique à l’âge classique (Seuil).

Vittorio Gallese is Professor of Physiology at the Dept. of Neuroscience of the University of Parma, and a trained neurologist. Neuroscientist, his research interests focus on the cognitive role of the motor system and on an embodied account of social cognition. His major contribution is the discovery, together with his colleagues of Parma, of mirror neurons and the elaboration of a theoretical model of social cognition – embodied simulation theory. He worked at the University of Lausanne, at the Nihon University of Tokyo, and at the University of California at Berkeley. He received the Grawemeyer Award for Psychology in 2007, the Doctor Honoris Causa from the Catholic University of Leuven in 2010, and the Arnold Pfeffer Prize for Neuropsychoanalysis in 2010.