Juggling and Science: The Field of Possibilities

Since 2022, the Maison des Jonglages and the Atelier du Plateau have been working together to co-produce and present collaborative works as part of evenings dedicated to experiments in the arts and sciences. The public is invited to enter a laboratory where researchers and artists will dialogue and share their practices and knowledge through new forms of art and scientific research.

Which monkey are we?

In an attempt to understand human evolution and hominization, human– look at other great ape species, which are both close and distant. However, what is often studied in these hominids – chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans – are the characteristics considered to be particularly developed in the human species.

But what would we see if we looked at humans– based on the characteristics and abilities of the great apes?

Emilia and Marie ask themselves this question by stepping into the shoes of the great apes, seeking to shed light on how we exist and how we are present.– of humans– in the world.

Creation Art/Science 2026

Based on a true story

What makes us believe in what we see? How does art play with our willingness to follow or obey, to make sense where it’s absent or wavering, or even, more fundamentally, to play? What if believing were not just a matter of individual adherence, but a relational practice – something we do together, on the edge of meaning and fabulation?

Conceptual and circus artist Darragh McLoughlin and philosopher Erik Bordeleau join forces at the Maison des Jonglages to explore the scenic and perceptive mechanisms of (making) people believe in the world. Because believing is not magic: it’s a matter of context, staging and acting. Play as a parallel space where other realities become possible. An infinite game, as James Carse would say, whose aim is not to win, but to keep on playing – to create futures we can believe in, again and again.

Between the psychology of perception and the suspension of disbelief, between artistic gesture and philosophical speculation, Darragh and Erik interrogate that metastable threshold where description and fabulation enter a zone of indeterminacy: that tipping point where art, as Robert Filliou put it, is what makes life more interesting than art, because it turns it into a true story.

Creation Art/Science 2026