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6/5/2004

Communaute 1

Institut d'Art Contemporain, Lyon

From 7 May to 26 September 2004, the Institut d'Art Contemporain (IAC) in Villeurbanne-Lyon is putting on the exhibition Communaute.

1st Part: Communaute 1, 7 May - 4 July 2004, presenting Francis Alys, Christophe Berdaguer & Marie Pejus, Sam Durant, Jimmie Durham, Melik Ohanian, Henrik Olesen, Elena Panayotova, Constanze Ruhm, Anri Sala, Tino Sehgal

Recently acquired works from the FRAC Rhone-Alpes encounter projects by invited guest- artists in a situation of multiplex ''project rooms''.

Communaute does not conform to a traditional exhibition scheme, with a determinate thematic line. Rather, it has been conceived of as a treatment of the aesthetic languages used by artists to describe what it is that makes up a community, with its functions, its exchanges, its rules, its behaviours, its memories...

The works in Communaute do not take up micro-political positions or fragmented identitarisms produced by the effects of ''globalisation'', nor does not comment on the swelling tide of communitarianism; nor does it select artists in terms of, national or ethnic origin. It foregrounds the work of artists who, outside of any ideologically-imposed globalising context, give an account of the transformations that have taken place in the social and cultural landscape. Through well-chosen spatialisations, procedures and symbolic language, these artists shed light on the way in which a ''community'' comes into being. They have their roots in specific cultures or countries, but they look at several communities simultaneously, working regularly in different geographical territories, confronted continuously with other types of perception. Thus a cosmopolitan community becomes established, a community of heterogeneity instead of sameness, - a community of the visual arts that are involved in the transformations that are taking place in society.

Communaute is intended to focus on situations into which people project themselves, and in which interactions between the individual and a group take place. The various works put the emphasis on processes for the regulation of social spaces. The exhibition is structured round contacts, cross-cutting games and the clarification of situations of tension between individuality and collectivity. It is an encounter between ''persons'', who are not charted by a typological ''sameness'' brought about by history and tradition. A number of works elucidate situations which relate to the transitions of the individual to the plural : to mention, the obsessive fantasies of two hyper-individualists in Anri Sala's Nocturnes; or Jimmie Durham's sculpture, to celebrate individual sovereignty; or again Tino Sehgal's dialogue on exchange and economy. Melik Ohanian's masterly White Wall Travelling restitutes the voice of the dockers of Liverpool, while Christophe Berdaguer and Marie Pejus litteraly create the magnetism for group dynamics, and Constanze Ruhm presents her film Re(hers)al, which is built around an play by a group of female characters. ''Geographics'', taken as a mental territory, are at work, both in the protocols of Francis Alys's psycho-geographical performances, in Sam Durant's project for a public counter-cultural monument, and in Elena Panayotova's decomposition of Balkan borders, not forgetting Henrik Olesen's deconstructive work in stigmatising the mental landscape of conventional sexual morality firmly bound to frozen schemata.

Image: Sam Durant, Proposal for Monument in Friendship Park, Jacksonville, FL, 2000 (courtesy Emi Fontana Gallery, Milan and Blum&Poe, Los Angeles)

A special issue of the art magazine 'Semaine' will be include documents on the artists and a curatorial text by Dirk Snauwaert.

The Institut d'Art Contemporain receives support from:
The Ministry of Culture
The Rhone-Alpes Region
The Municipality of Villeurbanne

Institut d'Art Contemporain (IAC)
Villeurbanne-Lyon
11 rue Docteur Dolard, F-69100 Villeurbanne, France
Opening Hours:
Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays: 1:00 - 6:00 pm
(1 June - 30 September: 1:00 - 7:00 pm)
Thursdays: 1:00 - 8:00 pm

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