"The future is not what will happen, but what we will do"
(H. Bergson)

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The Watch 2024 project consists of three major musical theater creations spread over three seasons.  

Composed of creators and performers of international level, it revolves around major works of the classical and contemporary repertoire, emblematic texts and an electro creation dedicated to the project.  

The peculiarity of the project lies in the creation of a professional artistic work, involving and relating the fundamental places of society: the hospital, the prison, the school, the emergency accommodation, the nursing home and the theater. It is an answer to the major questions highlighted by the recent health crisis.  

The themes and works chosen will be the result of a collective choice with the partners. Their sole criterion will be to constitute research to which the contribution of amateur participants will constitute an enriching expertise for creation.

We obviously think of time (echoing the Proust birthday), money, love.

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Olympic Games

A social and cultural stage

By reviving the ancient tradition of the Olympic Games, Watch 2024 wishes to combine art and sporting events in a civic and democratic gathering.  

The connection with the Paris 2024 Games will give Watch an echo, visibility and international scope.

If the five Olympic rings represent the meeting of the five continents, the object of Watch 2024 is the meeting of institutional actors to debate, reflect and create on education, health, culture, justice and solidarity.

Just as the stadium is the place of sporting spectacle during games, of gathering and of celebration, the theater would be the stage of creation, of thought and of a plural society.

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A scientific college

A citizen manifesto

The college, made up of scientists, artists and eminent figures from the chosen fields and themes, will define the social and artistic work axes, with the creation team.

Outside view and dramaturgical resource, the college will follow each step of the work in order to design meetings during the period of the Olympic Games.

It will produce and edit a “Fundamental Places Manifesto” in connection with the artistic work.

We think in particular of Delphine Horvilleur, Philippe Charlier, Christiane Taubira, Barbara Stiegler, Patrick Chamoiseau, Adeline Hazan ...

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An unprecedented dialogue

Contemporary writing

The uniqueness of the Watch project lies in its plural style. It creates a dialogue between literary and musical works with the writing of the participants, but also amateur writings between them. 

It offers a strong and theatrical dialogue between parts of the company which were never brought to communicate with each other.  

Writing, like mixed interpretation, amateur and professional, must be done with a level requirement, like in the cinema of the Dardenne brothers, "Entre les Murs", by Laurent Cantet, by Abdellatif Kechiche (" The Seed and the Mule ”), Karim Dridi (“ Khamsa ”) or Claire Simon (“ The Offices of God ”).

The writing workshops will be entrusted to confirmed contemporary authors.

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Social Ambition

For the participants, this project is a lever that promotes their self-esteem.

Their specific conditions arise here in added value, in invaluable expertise for artistic creation.

It sheds a strong light both on contemporary societal structures, but also on themes shared by all, uniting an immense variety of individual conditions in a common questioning.  

One of the strong features of Watch lies in the implementation of remuneration, particularly for inmates, thus placing them in professional conditions.

• The whole project will be motivated by a carbon footprint that meets and exceeds the objectives of Cop21.

• Social diversity, origin, gender, culture, etc. - will also be the subject of particular attention.  

• Finally, parity will be a condition for the composition of the team and of the scientific college. One of the years of partnership with the prison administration will be organized with a women's prison, co-education not being allowed in prison.  

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Partnerships

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• Penitentiary Integration and Probation Service 77 and the Meaux-Chauconin Prison Center

• Pitié-Salpêtrière mobile support and palliative care unit - AP-HP

• Parisian EHPAD to be defined

• The Popincourt emergency accommodation center of the Samu social in Paris.

• The Jeanne d'Arc school Paris 13th

Impact

Goals :

• 40 workshops 

• Direct beneficiaries (APHP patients, people hosted by Samu Social, EHPAD residents, prisoners, students): 500

• Indirect beneficiaries (show, digital platform, etc.): 10,000

• 30 speakers at the Scientific College

• 10 partner structures

Strong points :

• Creation of a show involving workshop participants and artists associated with the project

• One-year project with partner structures and participants

• Reach a large audience of participants through writing workshops

• Crossing of prevented audiences

Skills mobilized:

• Public speaking

• Concentration

• Management of stage fright

• Communication

• Know-how

• Attendance

• Self-confidence

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Digital platform  

Through social networks and a digital platform, Watch will raise awareness among the general public as well as public and private institutions by witnessing individual experiences. A website will be designed and will open a participatory digital platform and a web channel [AR3].  

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A model to decline

The model, the process, like the creations can be adapted and declined in other cities and by other participants. A "tour", retaining the musical and literary base, open to rewriting and adaptation to other musical groups, could thus take other forms throughout the country and beyond.  

Documentaries

Arte Radio, a partner of Samu Social, could extend this partnership to all areas of writing and accompany the creations of a sound documentary.

A long-term documentary would find an essential place here, an analysis of the course and effects of the project, but also a follow-up of the work of the scientific college. 

Watch - Miscellaneous Travel

(2019)

Experience and partners

The strength of Watch 2024 lies in knowing the partners and the creation process. It is based on the success of Watch - Voyages Divers, created at the MC93 in 2020, under the aegis of the Orchester de chambre de Paris. Watch 2024, with a budget increased by 200% compared to that of “Voyages Divers”, aims at an artistic creation with means of production equal or superior to any professional musical creation.

Press

LE FIGARO 

Benjamin Puech

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Olivier Fredj wants to give a gypsy air to certain notes by Schubert, something of Goran Bregovic from Emir Kusturica's films.  

Sofiane's monologue impresses. “Memory is not sterile, so that the nightmare does not repeat itself,” he says. His words will stay in ours, from memory.

If, as the Watch proves, theater can bring benefits to inmates, the reverse is not wrong.  Is it due to their experience? There is an intensity in their voice, which manages to weave its way into the cold, dreamy melancholy of the Winter Trip.

THE PARISIAN

Guénaèle Calant

A major project, in which the international pianist Shani Diluka, the electro musician Matias Aquayo and professional actors participate.

If the director Olivier Fredj was seduced by the project, it is because at the time, precisely, he kept repeating: “I don't have time. "It was he who had the idea of extending the writing of texts to people for whom time has also stood still, in a hospital, a retirement home or a residential center:" I see the theater as a link between all these audiences that are said to be non-productive. It is a way of questioning society by provoking encounters. "

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Paradox

PalAce

The artistic forms created by Paradox Palace are a replica, a societal and theatrical response:

• To presentism and urgency. Has the tendency to museumify the past and living art. The desire to make innovation the palliative of a future that seems disastrous.

• In isolation by the identical, as much of the algorithms that cannot be mastered as of the comfort of the inter-self of the elites as well as the excluded. 

• To the obligation of truth, direct, information, content at all costs. To set it against the tale, the story and the form.

• To violence, both certainties, judgments of extremes, and totalitarian peace of the powerful through uniformity.

• In the temptation of a culture which could only welcome in nobility or visit in colonial, but could not join the common place, would not risk the confrontation.

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Feedback 

Watch Voyages Divers (2019)

"I came with answers, but you came with the right questions" 

Bizon, participant in Watch - Voyages Divers

"See my name on the door of the lodge, I was not just a prisoner" 

Hadyl, participant in Watch - Voyages Divers

"I felt an emotion that I had never had before"

Shani Diluka, pianist

“I saw, there was my name during my text. They played it well ”

Willy, hosted at Samu Social.

Heard in the workshop: 

- "This Schubert is deceptive!" 

- "No, he is not misleading, he is open-hearted" 

"Schubert, it's me"

"There must be art therapy from Schubert, right?" "William

"Moments of real expression in prison are rare, Watch is a way of expressing oneself, of laughing, of speaking as we please".

Hadyl

"Is she in the Sarah room?" (APHP patient, co-author) It's the pressure! I will make her proud of her text! " 

Hadyl, participant in Watch - Voyages Divers

"This is a unique project, we must continue it and make it a model for an interministerial mission that would be implemented throughout France"

Conclusion of the sponsorship meeting after Watch - Voyages Divers

“But the homeless, hospital patients and all that, they have to be helped, but we are locked up because we did something wrong, it's not the same. It is strong to put us with them. "

Reaction of inmates to the presentation of the project. 

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"Are we going to go to Arte?" TV is good but Arte is classy ”. 

Sofiane, participant of the penitentiary center

Anecdote:  

Following Watch - Voyages Divers, a social worker who saw the report on Arte contacted the company to find Mr Sakraoui, hosted at the Samu Social, whom she accompanied ten years ago, and whose business she had kept since. the day he was gone. Mr Sakraoui thus found his childhood memories kept in a suitcase.

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