​What is known as “theory”—books on ideas, concepts, and analysis that come to us from philosophy and the humanities — has become indispensable today in the professional training of artists and authors. These books provide students with a better understanding of how the world is structured ‒ socially, politically, and economically ‒ while also guiding reflections on underrepresented lives and leading the way to stories that remain to be told. But does theory have a place in literary and visual works themselves?

Through a journey marked by research in contemporary art and literary writing, Canadian art historian and essayist Benoit Jodoin has come to believe that the role of creation is to re-teach us how to think by intersecting knowledge in all its forms with lived experiences in the current state of the world: art as a way to think differently.

Drawing on a book recently published in Canada, Aimer la théorie (Loving Theory), Benoit Jodoin will share a conversation with Gabrielle Tremblay, a visiting professor at UiB, to advocate for forms of creation — in both literature and art — where research intersects with art, where academic references become social phenomena, and where art draws on every possible source.

Benoit Jodoin is an art historian and essayist. He holds a Ph.D. from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS, France) and the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM, Canada), and specializes in the relationship between contemporary art and theory, which he approaches from a queer perspective. In his self-theoretical essays, he approaches literature as a gathering space for diverse forms of knowledge and personal experiences to intersect, transforming creative practice into a laboratory for the world to come.

Professor Gabrielle Tremblay works for the Department of Literary Studies at the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM). She is also a member of the Interuniversity Research Centre on Quebec Literature and Culture (CRILCQ).

The event is co-organized by Daniel Chartier, Sonia Lagerwall, Margery Vibe Skagen, and Gabrielle Tremblay through the UTFORSK-project Porter la voix des autres / Målbære andres stemmer between the University of Bergen (Institutt for fremmedspråk) and l'Université du Québec à Montréal (Faculté des arts).

Gratis

Foto: Benoit Jodoin : Gabriel Fournier, Gabrielle Tremblay : Julie Artacho