The mission of EPFL’s Performance Lighthouse, launched in Spring 2024, is to lead the conceptualization, organization, coordination, production, and promotion of performance art projects driven by students of EPFL, in collaboration with external art institutions.

Through this initiative, this platform aims to build a network that facilitates cross-fertilization between the artistic endeavors of EPFL students and alumi, local art institutions and relevant activities conducted at DHI labs and other EPFL labs.

Education:

Research in learning sciences demonstrates that engagement in performing arts practices enhances students’ learning processes, bridging the gap between theory and practice and promoting boundary crossing from academic to extracurricular realms. This integration is rooted in the involvement of the body in knowledge acquisition and production, the collective essence of creativity and the potent role of improvisation in all living actions.

• The course IMPROGINEERING: “Collective creation: improvised arts and engineering”, integrated into EPFL’s Human and Social Sciences (SHS) program, was developed by Prof. Simon Henein, in collaboration with performance artist Joëlle Valterio and the Arsenic (Lausanne’s Center for Contemporary Scenic Art). Since 2017, this course has been introducing students to improvisation techniques developed in the living arts (theater, music, dance, performance) and examining their possible transposition to engineering design practices.

Outreach:

Academically recognizing and supporting the artistic endeavors of EPFL students enables the valorization of these initiatives within the curricula such as through the allocation of ECTS credits to semester or master’s projects. Moreover, extending the reach of these initiatives beyond academia by creating public events in partnership with external artistic institutions enhances the exchanges with the city and broader community.

Research:

Performing Arts as Pedagogical Tool in Higher Education (ASCOPET)

Publications:

BOOK: R. Tau, L. Kloetzer, S. Henein (Eds.), 2024, Barefoot academic teaching: performing arts as a pedagogical tool in higher education, SCENARIO Book Series, Schibri-Verlag Publisher

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Past events:

• 21 and 22 May 2024
  Public performances at ARSENIC, Lausanne, of the EPFL students of the Improgineering course

• 1 June 2024
  The body on stage in light of improvisation
  At ARSENIC, Lausanne. Workshop taught by Simon Henein (professeur in microengineering, EPFL) and Joëlle Vaterio (performer and teaching assistant, EPFL) within the “BODY” module of the Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) “Dramaturgie et performance du texte” (CAS under the responsibility of Danielle Chaperon (professeur of French Literature, UNIL) run by La Manufacture and UNIL.

  In the neo-avant-gardes of the 1960s, the body asserted itself as a means of blurring the boundary between art and life. The art of performance (happening, event, action, participation, improvisation…) contributed to a redefinition of theatre as a “living art” that continues to this day.

• 7 June 2024
  ARTS FOR TEACHING Seminar
• 8 June 2024
  Public performances at Théâtre Le Pommier, Neuchâtel, of the EPFL students of the Improgineering course

Vidéo “Performance and opening of the book Barefoot Academic Teaching“

Barefoot Academic Teaching
Book vernissage with live performance
Le Pommier -Theâtre – Centre culturel Neuchâtelois
8 June 2024, Neuchâtel

Barefoot Academic Teaching
Performing arts as pedagogical tool in higher education
R. Tau, L. Kloetzer, S. Henein (Eds.), 2024, 204 pages
SCENARIO Book Series, Schibri-Verlag Publisher

Panel discussion moderated by Simona Ferrar, with the following book co-authors: Simon Henein, Laure Kloetzer, Susanne Martin, Ramiro Tau and Joëlle Valterio

Other book co-authors: Danielle Chaperon and Cédric Tomasini

Public performance at Le Pommier theater, Centre Culturel Neuchâtelois with:

• 14 EPFL students who followed the 2023-2024 Improgineering course
• 4 teachers of the Improgineering course: Simon Henein, Alexandra Macdonald, Susanne Martin, and Joëlle Valterio

Interview of audience members made directly after the event including:

• Yan Walther, Director of Le Pommier
• Anne Despond, 2017-2018 Improgineering alumni student

Lights: Jacques Bouduban
Translation: Simona Ferrar
Camera and video editing: Jean-Denis Borel
Production: Simon Henein, Performance Lighthouse, EPFL

Public reading of “Poetic resonance by a performance artist”

Public reading by Joëlle Valterio of her “Poetic resonance by a performance artist” published in the book:

Barefoot Academic Teaching
Performing arts as pedagogical tool in higher education
R. Tau, L. Kloetzer, S. Henein (Eds.), 2024
SCENARIO Book Series, Schibri-Verlag Publisher
with images of the public performance presented before the reading at Le Pommier theater, Centre Culturel Neuchâtelois, with 14 EPFL students who followed the 2023-2024 Improgineering course led by Prof. Simon Henein.

Camera and video editing: Jean-Denis Borel
Production: Simon Henein, Performance Lighthouse, CDH-EPFL

Sequence shot of the deployment of an improvised sequence

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Podcast

Episode 1, with Simon & Simona:

• SPOTIFY
• Itunes
• Youtube

Episode 2, with Marguerite:

• SPOTIFY
• Itunes
• Youtube

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Team:

• Simon Henein
  EPFL Professor in Microengineering & Head of the Performance Lighthouse

• Simona Ferrar
  Project Manager, dancer and choreographer

• Joëlle Valterio
  Technical specialist & performer

• Alain Bovet
  Postdoctoral researcher in sociology

• Tanja Ulrich
  PhD Student, ETHZ-EPFL Joint Doctoral Program in Learning Sciences