Ritual is a notion that the art world has increasingly reclaimed. From critical writing that zealously identifies rituals to artists who qualify their work as ritualistic, the notion circulates, poking at the boundaries of art practice. The pattern raises critical questions for art history: does it vanish the distinction between art and social practices, casting art's separation from ritual as a passing historical phase? What are the distinctions in the first place between representing and producing a ritual? These concerns come to the fore with moving images, given that ritual has long been at the heart of ethnographic film, while the very act of filming is becoming central to a growing number of social customs. Addressing these relationships, this thesis focuses on video work since the late 1990s. The thematic research moves through three case studies: series of works by Mike Kelley, Pierre Huyghe, Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch, while keeping a comparative view towards other observers and producers of ritual in premodern painting, ethnographic filmmaking, post-internet practices, mainstream cinema, and homemade videos. Among the most influential artists at the turn of this century, Kelley, Huyghe, Trecartin and Fitch share the singular practice of restaging, for and through film, the rituals that surround them, from high school hazing and carnivals to coronations, corporate team-building, Halloween, Valentine and May Days, suburban street fairs, birthdays, and the new observances of social media. Through close study of the artworks and of moving image tropes that shape social imaginaries, the thesis suggests that these artists produce new insights into contemporary human behaviour. While art and ritual tend to be tackled as coded objects to be deciphered, holding condensed information about the societies to which they point, anthropological theory that considers ritual for what it does (rather than what it symbolises) invites us to examine them instead as practices where portions of social reality are produced - formalised and reinvented.

Ce travail aborde la question des lieux d'art non pas, comme c'est souvent le cas, pour leurs répercussions sur leur voisinage, mais pour leur apport à la création plastique elle-même. Dans sa première partie sont précisés les termes de la recherche : le mot "stratégie" à la fois dans le contexte artistique et dans d'autres contextes ; les "quartiers d'art" selon leur usage: création, exhibition et habitation ; les "gens de l'art", considérés comme le groupe qui crée, conceptuellement, l'œuvre d'art. La deuxième partie présente, en plus d'une synthèse historique, six territoires de l'art contemporain : le Fbg Saint-Denis (Paris), qui constitue la colonne vertébrale de ce travail, la Macarena (Bogota), San Telmo (Buenos Aires), Belleville (Paris), le Red Hook (New York) et la ville de Berlin. La troisième partie analyse le travail individuel de sept personnalité de l'art ayant habité le Fbg Saint-Denis depuis l'année 2000 : Nathalie Heinich, Nicolas Bourriaud, Jean-Philippe Antoine, Thomas Hirschhorn, Esther Shalev-Gerz, Pierre Huyghe et Olga Kisseleva. La dernière partie relie cette recherche avec l'œuvre de son auteur. La conclusion met en évidence une série d'hypothèses qui se dégagent de cette étude : les lieux d'art comme instrument d'identification des différents groupes œuvrant dans l'art ; la notion de débat comme forme de stratégie, avec un niveau interne (qui participe et à quel titre) et un niveau global (le rôle de l'art dans la société) ; les artistes considérés non pas comme une catégorie socio-professionnelle, mais comme "produits" de chaque groupe social ; l'art comme une forme de participation à un territoire commun plus que comme un espace en soi. / This work concerns the question of art territories, but not, as is often the case, for their repercussions on their neighbourhood, but for their contribution to the plastic creation itself. In the first part, the terms of the research are defined: the word "strategy" in the artistic context as well as in other contexts; the "art districts". according to their use: creation, exhibition and residence; the "people of art", considered as the group that creates, conceptually the artwork. The second part presents, in addition to a historical synthesis, six territories of contemporary art: Faubourg Saint-Denis (Paris). which is the backbone of this work, Macarena (Bogota), San Telmo (Buenos Aires), Belleville (Paris), the Red Hook (New York) and the city of Berlin. The third part analyses the individual work of seven contemporary art personalities who lived in Faubourg Saint­Denis since 2000: Nathalie Heinich, Nicolas Bourriaud, Jean-Philippe Antoine, Thomas Hirschhorn, Esther Shalev-Gerz, Pierre Huyghe and Olga Kisseleva. The last part links this research with the work of its author. The conclusion highlights a series of hypotheses emerging from this study: places of art as an instrument of identification of the different groups working in art; the notion of "debate" as a form of strategy, with an internal level (who participates and in what capacity) and a global level (the role of art in society); artists considered not as a socio-professional category, but as "products" of every social group; art as a form of participation in a common territory more than as a self-space.