Nuit Blanche 2012
On the occasion of the 2012 edition of the Nuit blanche, the Fondation d’entreprise Ricard is getting involved in the Nuit des savoirs, or «Night of knowledge.» A place of exchange and dialogue, the Fondation invites the public to take part in lectures on sociology, contemporary art, poetry, and performance from 8pm to 4am on Saturday, October 6.
NIGHT OF KNOWLEDGE PROGRAM
8pm, Invitations to the Imagination
Le luxe nocturne de la fantaisie
Michel Maffesoli invites philosophers Edgar Morin and Gianni Vattimo
In some eras, calls for clarity just prevail. This is the case with modernity, which—coming from the philosophy of the Enlightenment—emphasized reason, the faith in Progress, labor as a value. All dimensions of social life had to become functional, utilitarian, “utensilian” even. In short, the world was to be mastered and ruthlessly exploited. The incipient societal mood in early postmodernism has been quite different, with Imagination occupying a privileged place in it, the sense of PRESENT («Carpe diem») gaining a newfound force and vigor, and creation becoming an important “concern” to anyone.
In this mood, the nocturnal has assumed a positive value. Nighttime is a privileged moment for fancy and “luxury” (to be understood in its etymological sense here: what serves no purpose).
And as everyone knows, things are all the more beautiful as they are useless.
10pm, Conversations on Art
UN PEU TARD
Patrick Javault invites Olivier Mosset and Mathieu Mercier, artists and Jeff Rians, musician and art critic
In a career spanning over 45 years, Olivier Mosset has taken part in the avant-gardes and their dissolution, the underground and the 1968 protests, the neo-geo and abstraction in French-speaking Switzerland. While he emphasized the beginnings of painting within BMPT, these days he is among those carrying the banner of abstraction. Olivier Mosset represents quite a bunch of stories, but also a particular relation to art history and its currents on both sides of the Atlantic.
Mathieu Mercier is interested in the influence of avant-gardes in our daily environment and the way in which things are exhibited and stand on the edge between two definitions. His works are arrangements with the real, constructed art, and the ready-made, as visitors will find out in November with his personal exhibition at the Fondation d’entreprise Ricard. On more than one occasion, Olivier Mosset and Mathieu Mercier have also organized exhibitions; they have discovered and promoted young artists.
Jeff Rian is a musician and art critic, a writing and a sound at once. At this unusual hour, it will be an open round table, a practice of improvisation using images and sounds.
00pm, Poetry Platform
Statuaire parisienne / stature poétique : de quelle grandeur célèbre-t-on les femmes ?
Jérôme Mauche invites Christel Sniter, historian and Gwénaëlle Stubbe, poet
Following the principle of the Poetry Plaform series, two authors coming from very different practices will meet and exchange—on real and imaginary public spaces, statues and statuses, representations in the city, heroins in language.
Christel Sniter is a historian of representations and has published Les Femmes célèbres sont-elles des grands hommes comme les autres? (Grane: Créaphis, 2012). She analyzes how women were represented in public statuary in Paris in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and how militant dynamics also result in performative logics that influence the construction of political imaginaries.
Poet Gwenaëlle Stubbe humorously diverts stereotypes on women as well as men. She is the author of Ma tante Sidonie (Paris: P.O.L., 2010) and radio dramas (Des hommes et des poses). Her work takes the form of reading/performances but also involves the sociological analysis of the literary field she is carrying out at the EHESS. She is currently working on a sociological study of poets and aesthetics among themselves.
2am, Scores (Perfomances)
Performances of Julie Béna et Antonio Contador
To conclude the night of encounters initiated by the Fondation d’entreprise Ricard on the occasion of the Nuit blanche, Julie Béna and Antonio Contador will propose a two-character situation with no beginning and no end—a situation made of marks, traces, repetitions, acceleration, deceleration, rhythm, paths. The rules of the game will not be known by the public but the instructions will be very concrete. Through a series of gestures, narrations, manipulations of objects, the game will take shape, reinventing itself as it unfolds.
This performance comes after a first collaboration between the two artists, «Le chat est dans la forêt,» a performative and curatorial project that brought together 11 invited artists in June 2012.
