Philo aux Bains 2023

Sunday, September 24, 2023 at 10:00 a.m.

As part of the “Portraits parlés” exhibition at Les Bains, this café-philo will look at the daily lives of deaf people in an attempt to better understand this too-often ostracized community, opening up dialogue and exchange between hearing and deaf people. In particular, we’ll be looking at the many developments in sign language in Geneva as necessary adaptations and social, cultural and linguistic responses to hearing loss.

Guests:

Frédérik is a deaf artist, painter, illustrator and cartoonist. Born in 1974, he lives in Geneva. He began drawing at the age of 5 and has never let go of his pencil. In 1995, he obtained his diploma in theater design. RTS and the press entrusted him with several mandates as a storyteller and cartoonist. Since 2008, her project on the History of the Deaf has occupied her full time; created in the form of large-scale gouache paintings using a unique pictorial technique, they represent emblematic figures, an era, a theme, linked to deafness. These paintings, which have already attracted a great deal of public attention at exhibitions, are full of powerful symbolism and colorful imagery, and tell us the story of the Deaf, their history and their future.
inner world.

Jaime Barria is a Geneva-based hip-hop artist and blogger of Chilean and Colombian origin. Passionate about events, he excels as an entrepreneur and also organizes philosophical cafés. At the University of Geneva, her research focused on Geneva’s deaf population, with the aim of creating a guided tour highlighting their history, culture and arts. In particular, he has explored the RTS program “Signes” and the translation of the Bible into LSF. The visit ended at the VROOM restaurant, and provided an opportunity to discover the richness of Geneva’s deaf culture.

The café-philo will take place under the yurt. Free admission.

Sunday, October 1 at 10:00 a.m.

It will soon be fifty years since we experienced what some call the humanities crisis: university humanities departments are, at best, seeing their budgets or staff numbers reduced from year to year, or, at worst, being forced to close. Does this reflect the inability of certain academic circles to renew themselves and “keep up with the times”? Or is it simply because students are less and less interested in this type of study? And what can these departments do to reinvigorate their students’ interest in the arts and citizenship that are needed now more than ever?

With Basile Zimmermann (author) and Marco De Francesco (illustrator), we’ll be tackling these questions in connection with the publication of their book Humanités Populaires, la Culture des Objets.

Basile Zimmermann is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Geneva. He runs the Confucius Institute and is particularly interested in Asia and digital objects and cultures.

Marco De Francesco is a digital craftsman based in Lausanne.

The discussion will take place under the yurt at the Bains des Pâquis, free admission. The presentation will be illustrated by Marco De Francesco and Dimitri Delcourt.

Sunday, May 28, 2023 at 10:00 a.m. – View the online discussion

The need for ever greater pleasure and the cult of success are the watchwords of our age. Since then, moral suffering has become an intruder, a taboo subject. People who are not doing well suffer a double penalty. The feeling of failure is compounded by the shame of moral suffering.

In her latest book, En Finir avec la culpabilité, retrouver la joie, Annie Coll attempts to show that suffering is part of the human condition, and that it takes nothing away from the possibility of joy, if we know how to keep it at a safe distance.

In this café-philo, with Annie Coll, we’ll explore issues ranging from the imperatives of success to those of failure and moral suffering.

Annie Coll has been teaching philosophy in Dinan since 1991, is active in various causes and publishes poems and political articles in various magazines.

Meet us on the Bains des Pâquis jetty in fine weather, or under the cover of the refreshment bar if it’s raining, on Sunday May 28 at 10.00 am. Free admission.

Saturday, June 17, 2023 at 10:00 a.m. – Review the online discussion

The modern individual was born with the promise of freedom. But after his victories, he’s now enslaved himself, on a planet under threat. The ethic of defending individual rights and freedoms, once emancipating, leads to a dead end, and the individual to new servitudes, particularly digital ones. The source of these perils: the revolution in the Middle Ages that enthroned the will as man’s supreme faculty, above reason. It’s difficult to set limits on this desire. But it’s essential. From now on, we need to protect individuals and spirits like we protect the seabed. This is the price of survival.

In his most recent book, Le Second âge de l’individu. For a new emancipation, Mark Hunyadi explores new ways out of the impasses in which modern individualism and its rights ethic have trapped us. It is resolutely turned towards a constructive future, and formulates a bold proposal for the future of our societies: declare the mind a common heritage of humanity, like the seabed.

In this café-philo, with Mark Hunyadi, we’ll explore issues relating to the place of the individual in society, as well as those relating to freedom.

Born in Geneva in 1960 to parents who had fled Hungary four years earlier, Mark Hunyadi is currently Professor of Social, Moral and Political Philosophy at the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium). He studied in Geneva, Paris and Frankfurt with Jürgen Habermas, with whom he worked for two years, before obtaining his doctorate in Geneva in 1995 (supervisor: Jean-Marc Ferry). He was Professor of Moral and Applied Philosophy at Université Laval de Québec from 2004 to 2007. In 2010, he founded the Centre Europé at UCL, where he is also part of Louvain Bionics, a research center dedicated to the interface between robotics and medicine. He regularly reports on philosophical news in the literary supplement of Le Temps (Lausanne/Geneva).

Mark Hunyadi is also Associate Professor at the Institut Mines-Télécom in Paris (VP-IP Chair: Values and Politics of Personal Information), a member of the Orange (France) Ethics Committee and a member of the joint INRAE-CIRAD-IFREMER-IRD Ethics Committee (4 French public research institutes)[1].

Meet us on the Bains des Pâquis pier in fine weather, or under the cover of the refreshment bar if it’s raining, on Saturday June 17 at 10.00 am. Free admission.

Saturday, May 6 at 11:00 a.m.

“It’s easy to recognize a person who’s on the right path. When he has reached his goal he no longer walks, he dances.” (Nietzsche)

At the Bains des Pâquis, the dance festival is in the spotlight!

Following the opening of the exhibition “Danse et poésie, Poésie et danse”, created by Dora Kiss, who will be present at the opening on May 3, we’re preparing a Café Philo – in the presence of Dora Kiss, author of the exhibition, and Sylviane Dupuis, poet and researcher – for a discussion on the art of movement and words from different angles. The aim is to shed light on the origins of free dance and poetry, and the links between two essential artistic disciplines that engage the body, emotion, speech and freedom. Each is a form of counter-power, pushing back the boundaries of established reality since their very beginnings, a reality that our two guests will argue with their respective practices and passion for art.

Dora Kiss holds a master’s degree in French literature and a doctorate in musicology and dance research. Recipient of several Swiss grants, she won the “Swiss Dance Heritage” prize launched by the Federal Office of Culture, which is helping to finance a project for a Swiss metacatalogue of dance writings, which she is coordinating.

Sylviane Dupuis is a poet, playwright and essayist, as well as teaching literature at the Collège and Faculté des Lettres in Geneva. Laureate of the Prix C.F. Ramus de Poésie in 1996, her play La Seconde Chute has been translated into several languages, and she has collaborated with a number of directors as a playwright, maintaining an ongoing link with other arts such as dance, painting and photography.

Sunday, May 14, 2023 at 10:00 a.m. – Review the online discussion

At a time when mixed-gender events are becoming more and more common (debates forbidden to cisgender men, meetings to which non-racists are not welcome, etc.), when desires for recognition – or inclusion – of almost all individualities are flourishing, when public dialogue between different groups seems more and more difficult, it seems to us more relevant than ever to reflect on the many questions relating to the place of these identity dynamics, as well as on the limits of society’s compartmentalizations.

Should inclusive writing be banned? What room is there for individual interests? What limits and what place for freedom of expression? What are the limits to activism?

In the company of Ralph Muller, doctoral student in French literature at the University of Geneva and YouTuber under the name Ralph La Cartouche, we’ll be tackling these and other questions at the Bains des Pâquis, under the yurt. Free admission.

Saturday, April 1, 2023 at 2:30 p.m.

Over the centuries, food has often been thought of, appropriated and instrumentalized to convey non-verbal – visceral – messages. The choice of ingredients and the arrangement of the guests at certain historic meals have made it easier to “ingest” words or “digest” a chord. Through anecdotes and key moments, we decode these international issues, from the Chinese cabbage war to Ronald Reagan, from Piedmont truffles to K-pop.

As part of the Festival Histoire et Cité, Les Bains des Pâquis is teaming up with Alessandra Roversi, a consultant in food communication and culture as well as sustainable consumption, to offer you a culinary journey unlike any other… you’ll never look at your plate in the same way again!

Join us at the Baths, on the pier and under the yurt for this discussion, which will be broadcast live on Facebook Live.

Sunday, April 30, 2023 at 10:00 a.m.

Over the last few years, artificial intelligence has gradually taken over a wide range of fields: healthcare, finance, transport, security, education, IT, the arts, etc., to such an extent that it has become difficult to do without it. Despite this gradual habituation, since November 30, 2022, with the arrival of the third version of ChatGPT – a conversational agent founded by startup OpenAI – many have discovered with fascination and dread that many things will radically change in the very near future. Some are talking about a revolution as important as the arrival of the Internet, while others are predicting the decline of Google or the disappearance of many professions as we know them today. Still others worry about the possible end of humanity, the gradual disappearance of the written word or the explosion of fake news and deep fakes, further weakening our already battered democracies.

In the company of Lê Nguyen Hoang, we’ll be tackling a number of burning questions about the place of artificial intelligence in 21st-century society, and the risks, dangers and opportunities it could bring.

Lê Nguyen Hoang holds a postdoctorate from MIT and is a researcher at EPFL, specializing in the ethics of artificial intelligence. He also runs a popular science YouTube channel, Science4All, and is the author and co-author of several books.

The café-philo will take place at the Bains, in the yurt (located on the pier) and will be broadcast live on Facebook Live.

Join us to discuss these key issues!

Saturday, March 11, 2023 at 10:00 a.m.

Director and writer Garance Le Caisne will present her latest book, “Oublie ton nom, Mazen el Hamada itinéraire d’un disparu”, the dramatic story of a young Syrian who fled Syria. When he arrived in Europe, he became the spokesperson for a generation of refugees, and one of the few Syrians to publicly denounce the torture suffered in state prisons.

This café-philo in collaboration with the FIFDH will be an opportunity to use Garance Le Caisne’s book as a starting point to address broader issues relating to the war in Syria, human rights and refugee rights.

The café-philo will take place on the Bains pier, under the yurt, and will be broadcast live on Facebook Live.

Sunday, March 12, 2023 at 10:00 a.m.

As part of the FIFDH, the Bains des Pâquis is offering a screening and a meeting, with your feet in the water, on the Bains pier, under the yurt. An opportunity to discover one of the films in the focus competition, “La vie devant elle”, a story and diary of Elaha, a 14-year-old Afghan girl. The screening will be followed by a meeting with the director, Manon Loizeau.

“Life Ahead” is the diary of Elaha, a 14-year-old Afghan girl who uses a small camera to tell her story. Through its narrative, the film depicts the reality of children growing up on the road, tossed from place to place to flee conflicts in the hope of returning to a normal life. Accompanied by Emily Loizeau’s musical compositions, Elaha invites us to reflect, with emotion and lightness, on the migratory journey and its implications: loneliness, mental fatigue and instability.

Free admission, no reservations required.