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30/9/2006

Biennale de Paris

Biennale de Paris, Paris

XV edition

Faced with international exhibitions such as the Biennales at Sao Paulo and at Venice, which paid tribute to established artists, in 1958 Raymond Cogniat,(at the time commissioner of the French pavilion in Venice), suggested to Andre' Malraux that an exhibition should be organised in Paris. The aim was to present a panorama of young international creation.

The Biennale de Paris was thus created in 1959. Almost fifty years after it was first celebrated, the XVth Biennale de Paris will be held in Paris, France and abroad, mostly between 1 and 31 October 2006. Nearly 100 projects from more than 20 countries will take part : 58 projects in Paris and its surrounding areas, 11 in the provinces and 29 in foreign countries.

The approaches presented speak for themselves. The Biennale de Paris no longer imposes objects, works, professionals artists or ideas.

History:
Faced with international exhibitions such as the Biennales at Sao Paulo and at Venice, which paid tribute to established artists, in 1958 Raymond Cogniat,(at the time commissioner of the French pavilion in Venice), suggested to Andre' Malraux that an exhibition should be organised in Paris. The aim was to present a panorama of young international creation. The Biennale de Paris was thus created in 1959.

From the beginning, the Biennale de Paris has had many disruptions but has always bounced back. Each time, it has had to choose a different path to follow. Over the years, the gradual centralisation of internal commissions has effectively proved insufficient to captivate audiences. The political tensions in 1968 disrupted the balance of the exhibition (artists and intellectuals were heavily involved in the controversy over old and run down institutions). A restructuring following the Documenta formula was imposed… The running of the Biennale de Paris was finally interrupted in 1985 after the organisation became too difficult to manage and no longer responded to the demands of present-day art. However, all the will power has come together to revive the Biennale.

Studies were carried out between 1993 and 2000 with the participation of the Ministe're de la Culture et de l'Association Francaise d'Action Artistique (Ministry of culture and the French Association for Artistic Action). The first was that of Alfred Pacquement in 1993, ordered by Phillipe Douste Blazy (Minister of Culture at the time). Following this, actors from the institutional art scene gradually came forward to relaunch the Biennale but didn’t put together any concrete proposals. In 2000 the Biennale de Paris was revived thanks to an association.After four years of preparation, the 14th edition of the Biennale de Paris took place from the 20th February - 15th March 2004.
Kristelle Lavaur & Caroline Durand

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Museum of the clouds
"The museum of the clouds is dedicated to the cultural inheritance that can't be enclosed between the four walls of a stockroom or the exhibition space of a museum. The vault of the sky is its exhibition wall. The museum of the clouds has no frontier as we know that no cloud can be commanded to stop. Outdoor, airy and free, the museum tries to highlight a precious inheritance: water, transforming before our eyes into a transparent liquid, into imperceptible steam or into ice. Water can't be confined; it just has to be shared.

The museum of the clouds tends to make you appreciate the benefits from nature abundantly transformed by our culture. To satisfy each one's needs, to supply, to spread and look after a public utility, to promote its development in the countries suffering from water drought, and to wonder how and when each inhabitant of the earth will get a healthy and profuse water. The museum of the clouds links natural and cultural inheritance in order to make us reflect on the millenary alliance between nature and culture. During the Biennale de Paris in 2006, the museum will put in circulation 1080 bottles that contain 75 centiliters of tap water, called << Eau de Paris >>. Some bottles will be given out during the closing press conference held on the Quai de la Confe'rence, on the bank of the Seine river. 900 bottles will be sold to restaurants that will thus support the museum of the clouds to pay tribute to simplicity."
Sylvain Soussan

"Gary Bigot - Thermo-hygrograph"
In 1985 Gary Bigot decided universally and by the right of intellectual property that every thermo-hygrograph - this instrument measuring humidity in museums- was his own piece of artwork. According to the artist, its specific function is to send each of us back to ourselves, sensitive, productive, knowing, and communicative. This is why he considers it his self-portrait so as not to call it "portrait of each of us". Liberating action/position that lets him radically consider all his work as produced and installed, producing itself and installing itself without his intervention.

After shock, the opening created by this extreme and definitive attitude reveals itself to be unsuspected and incites reflection and creation. This doesn't concern him anymore, he installs himself as the observer implicated by his own work, finished but not closed. He lets his concept and his attitude go free and, since from the outside the need manifests itself, he authorize everyone to use it, and to realize works of art, exhibitions, speeches, etc., even commercialization. And this without his agreement! He will abstain from making any criticisms or compliments and he will exclude himself from any pecuniary pretensions. The thermohygrographs produced by other people are labelled this way: "Gary Bigot - Thermo-hygrographe." by: (name of the producer)".

The National Lebanese Tabbouleh Day
"How to celebrate together when, less than a decade ago, a part of the population was attacking the other? A Lebanese artist, Ricardo Mbarak, has been trying to answer this thorny question for three years. The Beirut artist has decided unilaterally that the first Saturday of July would be the National Tabbouleh Day. “There is no celebration that unites the Lebanese. There are always religious or ethnical conflicts. I found the solution with cooking". “The idea is not to eat the meal as such. It is all in your head, in the acknowledgement of this common link" Mbarak explains, in “Lets all celebrate t abbouleh!" by Laura-Julie Perreault , La Presse, 9.07.2004.

“The Biennale de Paris views this celebration as an immaterial artwork (...). In 2005, more than 240 000 people gathered around a tabbouleh; it happened without any advertising from the Lebanese government so far. “Each house taking part in this national day transforms into a museum", says its initiator. “This gathering of the Lebanese community around a traditional meal is opened to everyone, without pretension. Its only ambition is to try to soothe the tensions and divisions suffered by a people bruised by a thirty-year-long war." "Celebration - Today : The National Lebanese Tabbouleh Day - Our favorite salad established as an artwork", by Maya Ghandour Hert - in L'Orient le Jour, 07/01/2006

Visualinguistic
Workshop created by Brigitte Rambaud and Siegfried D. Ceballos. You are looking for visual methods that stimulate your long-term creativity? Use the power of our visualizations! A visualinguistic tool is a conceptual technique with which creative projects are visualized and structured. The visualinguistic workshop has developed a wide range of these tools, from immediate to long term and from limited to general use.

With these tools you can, for example, present the ideas of a project much clearer, in order to make their realization easier. The main characteristics of visualinguistic tools - in their use and results - are clarity, interactivity, effectiveness and creativity. They are interactive as they act with the client’s reality without imposing a pre-established point of view. This allows the client to remain free to interpret the whole diversity of meanings that the visualinguistic workshop proposes. All the tools have been developed in relation with the client’s daily work; therefore they are the results of today’s active creativity.

Demonstration "Too many artists! "
This is a street demonstration, just like any other. A lot of people, both into and outside the art world, noticed that there are "Too many artists! ". This fact is related to the nature of art as it is produced today, both politically and socially, notably due to the interventionism of the French government. But this observation is usually said discreetly or anonymously.

There are two goals here: to make demonstration an artistic practice, and to ask for the diminution of the number of artists. “Too many artists!" is a contemporary claim but the wider problem of “too many/much" will also be addressed. The demonstration will be watched over by the police, there will be a mobilization campaign, tracts will be distributed and a press release will be sent. Finally, the number of participants counted by the police and by the organizers will be compared. The banners and slogans will only point at the excessive number of artists, and not to any selection criteria.

That’s Painting Productions
House painting company created by Bernard Brunon. “Maybe one of the roles of the artist is to provide a link with reality, proposing the experience of a direct link, unmediated to the real. The practice of house painting as an artistic activity, as a kind of painting freed from representation, can seem to be rather limited. But conceptually that's a very enriching activity I have been working on for more than ten years.

Getting out of the canvas and giving up paintings has enabled me to exceed the formal level and to open my practice to other fields such as the economic and the social ones, with an activity that is part of everyday life. House painting may not fulfill the same aesthetic demands as abstract painting, nevertheless quality is essential for its production. Stressing the process instead of the result and the presence instead of the representation, and emphasizing the here and now, I have exceeded the issues of form/substance. I can address other kinds of questions, related to everyday life".

Glitch
a lot more less!
Trademark founded by Jean-Baptiste Farkas. The word Glitch comes from the computer science vocabulary. It defines an irregularity, a working flaw. Jean- Baptiste Farkas created in 2002 the trademark Glitch to settle defectiveness (instead of effectiveness) inside a standardized production process. Glitch slogan informs directly about what it offers: "a lot more less". A work that one should put in the cold wave of art (from Vandalism to Gustav Metzger’s auto-destructive art), but with a tinge of humanism, Project Glitch offers to revisit "the tangible world under the influence of the minus sign" and to celebrate, against the current, alterations, damages and the loss of value".

Glitch produces article and services with "something less" that makes them paradoxically very exciting. You will discover a lot less drinkable beer because it was blended with water, a lot less comfortable T-Shirt because it has sleeves of two different sizes, or services that are allegedly "artistic" and above all inexperienced in the exhibition place they are presented in (destruction of the exhibition space) or for the works they are placed with (The Trojan Horse). Each time overwhelming and playful, critical (sometimes even a bit tricky) but also generous, Glitch doesn't only content itself with making profit of waste or expenditure. It aims at linking acts and sensations that we tend to opposite (producing/destroying…) and offers, thanks to a vision of the world on its whole, an additional ethic.

Microcollection
“Elisa Bollazzi is an artist whose work consists in stealing little fragments of artists' works. Once her turn accomplished, she classifies with scientific precision her material, according to its name, date, place of stealing and material. The products are put under a glass for microscope, and inserted in small white cases, all of the same kind, that are differentiated only with their labels, since the stolen fragment is microscopic. Therefore the work has no image, sprayed, invisible, reduced to almost nothing. The only difference is the name of the artists, who are gathered in a loot gallery, conveying a cemetery aspect. One can notice the disappearance of creativity, of image and of the working place.

Elisa Bollazzi's studio, nomad, is not a precise place, but the stealing place. The negation of the author is due to the underground aspect of the action. The furtive behaviour is inspired from the psychological components of detective novels, with coded messages and stereotypes. Right now Elisa Bollazzi's action is harmless… But what if "Elisas Bollazzis" multiplied unexpectedly, and stole fragments of a work? Soon -as if there were a colony of ants on a piece of bread - there wouldn't be anything else left of the work, anything else…" Extracts from the Stolen Powder, by Manuela Gandini

Ermut
“In 1995, I decided to found a mutual benefit society reserved to any person having an activity related to art (artist, gallery owner, journalist, curator, collector), who doesn't benefit from social cover. The statues of this mutual benefit society were accepted by the Local Direction of Sanitary and Social Affairs of Alpes de Haute-Provence, the 4th of December 1995. Today I am looking for dynamic, competent persons to take this mutual benefit society in hand. That is to say passing from the statues to actually putting it into practice." Ste'phane Be'rard, Digne-Les-Bains, January the 6th, 1997.

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Press Conference:
The press conference for the XV Biennale de Paris will be held on 26 September at 11 am at the Center for Foreign Press in France (Maison de Radio France).
116 Avenue du Pre'sident Kennedy 75220 Paris Cedex 16
Phone : + 33 (0)1 56 40 15 15
http://capefrance.com
Acce's : RER C, Bus 70 ou 72.

Catalogue:
The catalogue (1185 pages) brings together a comprehensive selection of unpublished documents and it will be available in October from Paris Muse'es or from the Biennale de Paris.
Philippe Magnani (Service diffusion Paris Muse'es)
Phone : + 33 (0)1 56 95 07 52
Fax : + 33 (0)1 56 95 05 19
E-mail : pmagnani@paris-musees.asso.fr

Contact:
Biennale de Paris
BP 358
75868 Paris cedex 18

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