K3 _ Manifestation 1 / 16 - 21 March 2009, Lorient, France
Graphic Design & Digital Week in Lorient.
Research, workshops, discussions, art interventions & installations in public space.

The opening of a Graphic Art & Design department at the Fine Art School of Lorient (Brittany) has been the motor for developing a working space related to design graphic & visual arts, and to question what it is to teach graphic design today.
It seemed natural to invite graphic designers, artists, art & design historians, to mix various mediums and practice in order to activate a space for exchanges and experimentations.

Mutation is the word that could summarise the current state of design graphic in France: a discipline that is at the border - or in constant circulation between - art, design, and communication.
If print was originally the main frame of work, the web and new medias (video, mobile phone, videogame..) now broaden and redefine this frame.
Mutation is also the word that could define the Lorient Fine Art School environment and site. The school is built on a location both industrial (fishing harbour) and military. In both case, most of the buildings around it are vacant. These abandoned spaces question more or less directly our society, activities, and environment...
A lot of them were formerly used for storage, industrial fishing, and business. They also bear the trace of a military past (the most important WWll German submarine station lays within 5mn from the school, and was still used by the French army until recently).
For many reasons, most of these buildings are left as they are, or are beginning to be restored. They are the signs of the society shift.
It is this territory that K3 is going to use.

The project is not to set up one more exhibition or festival, but on a short period of time (one week) to gather artists, graphic designers, art historians & critics that are cutting edge in the contemporary production. K3 is not an exhibition or a festival but the activation of a thought, an ongoing discussion happening within one week. From the Fine art School, workshops, discussions, art & design propositions in Public space are set up. The students are the actors of the project, and all events are open to the wide public.
K3 will mainly take place in the former Submarine station, with the will to re-affect this place without refurbish it, as if it were just a construction site.

Jocelyn Cottencin & Julie Morel (artists and professors, Lorient Fine Art School)