Resituation: Communication

Communication - second sequence of RESITUATION, series of nine curatorial projects by Estelle Nabeyrat and Frédéric Maufras

The exhibition takes the form of a documentary base on the means used for art communication: reviews, magazines, websites, and other communication media.

This collection of documents questions the current state of an increasingly profuse and globalised art communication. In view of the sheer load of information, has discourse on art definitively entered the era of mediation? Or is critical distance still possible in communication? Is it true that the press no longer plays a significant supplementary role in comparison to the platforms for information that have appeared on the internet over the last years? Although certain internet sites may seem as appropriate as printed media for the diffusion of writing on art, shouldn’t the question be the way in which information is processed, beyond mere efficient communication? For that matter, do these texts play nothing more than accompanying artistic processes or do they manage to engage their authors in a more meaningful way?

Communication is an ongoing project, with the documents progressively included in the show - interested contemporary art publications are still invited to contact us.

List of the first participating publications: Gagarin (Antwerp), Semaines (Arles), Homonumos (Beijing), L’Art même, La Part de l'œil (Brussels), Critique d'art (Chateaugiron), Exibart.onpaper (Florence), Tissu (Geneva), Contemporary, N.Paradoxa, Useless (London), Journal Sous Officiel (Marseille), ETC (Montreal), Moscow Art Magazine, Stone Milk (Moscow), Zérodeux (Nantes), Area revue, Artnord, Les Cahiers du Musée National d'Art Moderne, Checkpoint, Mouvement, Nuke, Palais, Point d'ironie (Paris), Atelier (Prague), Livraison (Strasbourg), CAC Interviu (Vilnius), Parkett (Zurich-New York). The complete collection of publications will be exhibited during the summer of 2007.

The project also includes works by artists, beginning with:

Sans-titre, an interactive installation by Julia Varga: a sound generator that produces discourse on art.

Top 100, volumes 1–3 by Davide Bertocchi. For each volume Davide Bertocchi asked a hundred art world personalities to choose their favourite piece of music, and thus builds up compilations highlighting the artistic selection process as non-critical choice.

Estelle Nabeyrat is a curator and art critic based in Lyon and Paris. She has notably contributed to Neue Review (Berlin) and Standard (Paris).

Frédéric Maufras is a curator and art critic. He lives in Paris. His articles and essays have appeared, among other publications, in L’Art même (Brussels), in Moscow Art Magazine and in Parachute (Montreal).

RESITUATION

In a singular context – that of an exhibition venue belonging to a State art school – the intention is to use a series of projects to explore the exhibition format in the age of globalised art. The initial idea is to look for localised responses with a «resituation» depending on a critical examination of the international art’s certain recurring features – communication, dematerialisation and subversion, among others.

With the triumph of the culture industry – of spectacular codes over-integrated into the process of making and showing international art – the present context has shifted somewhat; and this new situation needs to be sounded out by exploring possible avenues of experimentation and critical resistance.

Thus this «resituation» is designed as a seminar in action, one leading to a larger exhibition during the summer of 2007. Rather than organise the umpteenth better-than-ever-before show, the intent is to attempt an investigation spread over a year; and during that year to use la box as a laboratory for ideas, documentation and action.

Resituation:
Communication
Kuratoren: Estelle Nabeyrat, Frederic Maufras

mit Davide Bertocchi, Kerry Tribe, Julia Varga ...