In connection with her current research on human-animal relations, Eléonore Saintagnan invites students to take as their starting point a story that allegedly took place in China under Mao's dictatorship in the 1950s:
In 1958, Mao Zedong launched the Great Sparrow Campaign in China. It sounds like a big celebration, but it wasn't. Soviet engineers had calculated that the ten million sparrows living in China stole 25,000 tons of rice from farmers every year. After the great hygiene campaign to get rid of rats, flies, and mosquitoes, Mao decided to tackle the food-stealing sparrows and eliminate them completely. To do this, he launched a propaganda campaign to encourage the Chinese population to spread the birds [...] The massacre took on the air of a fair. Anti-sparrow songs were invented [...] In 72 hours, 10 million sparrows were killed. But this campaign had the opposite effect to that intended. Sparrows do not only eat seeds, but also insects, and the latter, with no predators to fear, feasted to their hearts' content. Locusts destroyed almost all of the crops, and the ensuing famine caused another massacre, this time of humans."
Based on this historical account, students will be invited to study propaganda posters and period photographs to explore the concept of reconstruction. The aim is to develop their critical thinking skills with regard to images while raising their awareness of ecosystems and biodiversity conservation.
This reconstruction will lead to the creation of banners, posters, songs, and a performance that will be captured on photo or video.
This long-term project is part of the Tout un monde vu d’ici (A whole world seen from here) twinning program with the four fourth and fifth grade classes at Trégain Elementary School. It includes:
-- classroom presentations on the art center, its history, and the professions involved;
-- visits to exhibitions at La Criée throughout the artistic cycle “Lili, la rozell et le marimba”
-- meetings and creative projects with artists from the program (Amadou Sanogo in 2020)
-- classroom research and workshops related to vernacular art and contemporary creation;
-- exchanges and promotion of students' work via “Correspondances,” La Criée's public service website, and during presentations at the art center and/or school.
partnership:
-- Trégain elementary school, Rennes
support:
-- Ministry of Culture - Drac Bretagne
-- City of Rennes - Department of Education and Childhood