Nos gestes, nos soins
“Nos gestes, nos soins” (“Our Gestures, Our Care”) is a research-creation collective initiated in 2021 by Yohana Benattar, Hanga Tóth, and Simon Le Borgne.
It brings together people involved in caregiving, artists, dancers, researchers, and healthcare professionals. The collective works with everyday gestures of care—questioning, shifting, and activating them in various contexts—seeking to bring forth new forms of knowledge about our relationships to the body and to care. Together, they develop an iterative process that combines documentary filmmaking, dance performances, and social science research.
Collective members:
Arnaud Halloy, Jean-Michel Benattar, Héloïse Jocqueviel, Rachel Paul, Luigi Flora, Pauline Bégué, Jesse O’Scanlan, Stéphanie Fauré, Natacha Mendjisky, Marielle Ravot, Saint-Clair Lefèvre, Simon Le Borgne, Hanga Tóth, Marianne Haroche, Yohana Benattar, Philippe Barrier, Hugo Franconeri, Fabó Tóth
With the support of:
Villa Arson (Ministry of Culture), the Center for Innovation in Partnership with Patients and the Public (Université Côte d’Azur), Jour et Nuit Culture (City of Paris), Artagon, la supérette (Maison des arts de Malakoff), l’Œil des Moulins, and La Ménagerie de Verre.
The project received funding in 2022 from the French government, managed by the National Research Agency (ANR) under the “Investissements d’Avenir” program UCAJEDI, reference no. ANR-15-IDEX-0.
“Nos gestes, nos soins” was awarded the 2023 “Culture and Health” grant by DRAC Région Sud and ARS PACA, in partnership with the University Health Center of Nice and the Villa Arson.
Yohana Benattar
Trained in documentary filmmaking and social sciences, Yohana Benattar is interested in gestures and knowledge rooted in everyday experience — in their embodiment, transmission, and transformation.
In her practice, she uses ethnographic methods and develops collaborative frameworks to create singular works (performance, film, text). She directed the short film Reconnaissance in 2019.
Hanga Toth
Hanga Tóth is a visual artist working between Paris and Budapest.
She is interested in the performative and processual dimensions of documentary film, and questions the conditions under which images and gestures are created. In her practice, she works across multiple forms of expression (video, performance, writing) to explore various articulations and translations between body and language.
After graduating from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, she studied contemporary philosophy and documentary filmmaking at Université Paris Diderot and Ateliers Varan. Her projects have been supported by Ateliers Médicis, Artagon, the DRAC, and the Robert Capa Center for Contemporary Photography. She is a member of FKSE (Studio of Young Artists Association, Budapest).
In 2022, Hanga Tóth and Yohana Benattar co-founded Étrangères Productions, a platform supporting research-creation projects at the intersection of artistic and scientific disciplines.
Simon Le Borgne
Simon Le Borgne is a dancer and choreographer based in Paris.
He began his training at the Paris Opera Ballet School in 2005 and joined the company in 2014. He was promoted to Sujet(soloist) in November 2019. He has performed works by Maguy Marin, Merce Cunningham, Jiří Kylián, Ohad Naharin, and Hofesh Shechter, and has taken part in the creations of Season’s Canon and Body and Soul by Crystal Pite, Play by Alexander Ekman, The Male Dancer by Iván Pérez, Faunes by Sharon Eyal, and Cri de Cœur by Alan Lucien Øyen.
Alongside his career as a performer, he has been developing his own creative projects since 2018. In collaboration with Marion Barbeau, he created La Fille du Fort, a site-specific piece for the Fort d’Aubervilliers. For the 2022/23 season, he was supported by Le Gymnase CDCN as an associate artist for his creation project Mue, and collaborated with Boris Charmatz at Tanztheater Wuppertal.