EXHIBITION/ LIVING ROOM
LOCATION/ BASEL, 2017
abstract/ a temporary pavilion
conceived as an open
platform, a space for discussions with
artists, curators
& the public.

STATEMENT

A KIND OF UNDERLYING AWARENESS LINKS THE VARIOUS ARTISTIC INTERVENTIONS IN THIS EDITION. FAR FROM EXPRESSING ANY ETHICAL OR POLITICAL JUDGEMENT, THE GUIDING THREAD THROUGH THIS EXHIBITION AT THE ESPACE ARLAUD IS A CONTROLLED SURVEILLANCE OF OUR SITUATION. THE CRISIS IS CONSTANTLY PRESENT IN THE MEDIA AND SUMMONED TO TELEVISION DEBATES.

IT SEEMS TO INHABIT, OR EVEN SATURATE, OUR DAILY LIVES. TO SUCH AN EXTENT, A KIND OF ACCEPTANCE SETTLES IN WITH APPARENT NORMALITY. IT FEELS AS IF THE CRISIS WERE AN INTRINSIC AND NECESSARY PART OF OUR SYSTEM. OF COURSE, THERE IS NOTHING NEW ABOUT THIS SITUATION. CRISES HAVE ALWAYS MARKED HISTORY. THEY BRING BOTH DEADLOCK AND CHANGE TO EXISTING ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, OR CULTURAL SYSTEMS.

IN A DEFINITION THAT IS NOW CANONICAL, MICHEL FOUCAULT DESCRIBES THE DISPOSITIF AS THE NETWORK THAT CAN BE TRACED BETWEEN THE DIFFERENT ELEMENTS OF A HETEROGENEOUS WHOLE, INCLUDING LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS, URBAN AND ARCHITECTURAL PLANNING, STRUCTURES FOR SURVEILLANCE AND THE ORGANISATION OF POWER, AND SCIENTIFIC, PHILOSOPHICAL AND MORAL FORMULATIONS.

SECONDLY, INSOFAR AS THE SYSTEM OUTLIVES THE INTENTIONS BEHIND ITS CREATION, IT IS MAINTAINED BEYOND THE INITIAL STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES THROUGH A CONTINUOUS READJUSTMENT OF ITS CONSTITUENT ELEMENTS IN ORDER TO MANAGE THE EFFECTS, INTENDED OR UNFORESEEN, THAT IT HAS ITSELF GENERATED.

IN THIS DYNAMIC, EMERGENCE AND DISCIPLINE, SPONTANEITY AND CONSTRAINT, FREEDOM AND COERCIVE DISPOSITION ENGAGE IN A MOVEMENT OF CONSTANT READJUSTMENT IN THE HOPE, DESIRE OR ILLUSION OF MAINTAINING THE DOMINANT ARRANGEMENT IN PLACE. THIS SYSTEM, HOWEVER, IS NOT A PRECISELY LOCATABLE ENTITY, BUT RATHER A SET OF HETEROGENEOUS ELEMENTS, A DYNAMIC STRUCTURE COMPRISING A MULTITUDE OF OTHER CONSTITUTIVE SYSTEMS.

There are documents about local urbanism and objects evoking underground and parallel stories, such as a 1912 swiss oil drum borrowed from the Geology Museum. These objects mix with the artistic projects: a research about the very special Israeli Army war strategy and inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s theory (Monya Pletsch), the theorization of a Maelström-based society (Aurélien Gamboni), the construction of a mythology about antimatter (Kara Uzelman), and also Adrien Lohmüller’s Water Portraits, liquid records obtained by washing clothes via a filtering system designed by the artist.

As our approach is inspired by Archeology, we asked the artists to capture and to reveal this idea of stratification. The aim was to question the urban structure of the city and to look deeper through the visible surface. La Riponne’s secret underground gathers together various imaginations where the oil flux meets the rivers’ flux, where the various town’s stories lead to one point, a place that finally only belongs to our imagination.

PARTICIPATING
ARTISTS

AURÉLIEN
FROMENT

PULMO MARINA

Against a uniform Klein blue background, a yellow jellyfish undulates its stinging tentacles like a fragment of living lace, while a somewhat official voice-over describes its baroque anatomy, voracious cannibalism and biological ancestry.

BAPTISTE
GAILLARD

Une terrasse comme miroir aux endives et à la cosmologie

You can't look at Baptiste Gaillard's work without thinking that our world has reached a breaking point, due to automatism. Whether in the world of art, design or mechanics, forms and motifs are endlessly repeated at an increasing, frantic pace. By collecting fragments of objects, relics of everyday life and the detritus of an archaeology of the present, Gaillard creates installations that evoke an art history that is very recent, but in some ways already obsoletE.