CODE South Way #3 Launch
Launch of CODE South Way with authors Sonia D’Alto, Nikita Dmitriev, Victor Mazière, Julia Marchand, Georgia René-Worms, Joël Riff, chiefs redactors Charlotte Cosson & Emmanuelle Luciani, and many artists and former staff of CODE and CODE 2.0!
Over successive issues, a journey emerges: not only a way towards the South, but also the way out of the megalopolises. This is the CODE South Way project: to reveal practices which do not follow the logic of capitals – if not to say the logic of capitalists.
The medieval world resisted centralisation, and delegation to a third party was unknown; the division of work is at the basis of mercantile capitalism which has regulated western society since the Renaissance. However, the emerging creation developed a twofold process: a certain decentralisation and a return to feudal, or even ancient production methods. Far from the manufactured products of modern and postmodern eras, contemporary productions reconnect with craftmanship. Pottery and textile abound.
By indulging in ceramics and weaving, young artists connect with the most ancient trades of the world – and thus with the History of all humanity.
With their humility – do we need to remind ourselves of the etymology of the term humus/earth? – and their veneration of imperfection which would command the respect of a Yanago Soetsu, these artists are taking part in a new way of apprehending what is real, which is trying to distance itself from the condition which Lyotard described so well.
We will define it as Oracular / Vernacular: a desire to project ourselves again into the future, thanks to deep roots in the past and vernacular traditions.
A desire which is not only a far cry from a modern headlong rush but also from postmodern stasis. CODE South Way therefore claims to promote this new era.
This is where our definition of works of art emerges: they are formal crystallizations of changes in the world. CODE South Way aims to be a way of understanding these crystallizations, of unfolding them, of analysing them. Following on from Heinrich Wölfflin, this magazine commits to a vision where formalism is rooted in its context: “a style is the expression of a period”, the historian wrote quite correctly.
The works from the beginning of the XXIst century are never as violent as the right words on a banner; however, they are no less effective. Like them, CODE South Way indirectly promotes a political project: going beyond this Anthropocene which seems more to be a capitalocene.
Going beyond it does not automatically imply destruction. A revolution, annihilating aristocracy, destroys the culture from which it originates. However, carrying out a revolution – wiping the slate clean – is completely out of step with CODE South Way’s values.
Henceforth it seems essential to consider things on the scale of our civilisation rather than that of our society which is too narrow and is coming to an end. CODE South Way is a plea of a historic conscience, the only perspective working towards a future.
Charlotte Cosson & Emmanuelle Luciani
