Launch of the book Pratiquer l’exposition (une écologie)
Launch of Agnès Violeau's book published at éditions Mix.
Collection “gris” directed by Fabien Vallos & Jean-Baptiste Carobolante
Distribution: Presses du réel
Launch at the Foundation's bookshop, February 10, 4pm
Programme: book signing by the author Agnès Violeau, followed by “We’re Going Down”, a new performance by Emilie Pitoiset
Temporary exhibitions, the spearhead of 21st-century art venues, are being shaped by the transformations of a world without a foundation. In an age of immersive exhibitions and instagrammable venues, how can temporary exhibitions be seen as an active common good? Through its use and agentivity, can it be a vector of values through which to rethink the world? Why "make" an exhibition today? What new subtractive models can it propose? Drawing on a selection of works based on experience rather than object, on pedagogy rather than expotainment, this essay, written using the principle of fieldwork literature, envisages the exhibition as a place of encouragement, an ecological surface, a device of necessary social sustainability.
“We’re Going Down” is a reading that embodies the productivist injunctions of sport, where it's all about a permanent return on investment. Emilie Pitoiset uses the athletic metaphor and its authoritative lexical field ("performer," "bodybuilder", "pull-ups") to evoke the tuning of the social body. The reading follows two previous pieces evoking the Captcha, the secure online word that distinguishes human from robot (according to the Turing test). Does the exhibition need to be "pummped up" to appeal to the public? How can it be an event without being a spectacle? "We're Going Down" serves as the living form of the work for its launch at the Fondation.