microsillons A selection of projects – 2013 Foreword In parallel to the ‘educational turn in curating’, we have seen in the last years the development of an ‘artistic art mediation’ (Künstlerische Kunstvermittlung), with projects that are autonomous from art pieces or exhibitions, producing their own discourses. Questioning their role as agents of an institutional service to ‘sell’ exhibition, some art educators are transforming the field of art mediation and open spaces for critical discussion on society, building new forms of collaboration and cultural practices within the institutions or outside of them. In our practice, we defend this idea of speaking ‘from the art’ rather than ‘talking about art’, building spaces for dialogue and developing situated forms and discourses in collaboration with groups of non-artists participants. We think that, rather than seeking to facilitate access to culture (with a somewhat consumerist vision) it is important to create the conditions for an active participation of the ‘publics’ in the life of the institution. An art education structure should work like a laboratory, a space for unexpected things to happen, for productive intellectual conflicts to emerge (with the institution as well as between the participants). From one project to the other, we look for ways to challenge top-down relationships within a group, to make visible the process as well as a final result, through exhibitions or publications, and constantly ask ourselves which tools we could develop to avoid the manipulation and /or the ‘overvaluation’ of the participants productions. microsillons, 2013. COMMUNE DE MONTREUIL Model of the armorial COMMUNE DE MONTREUIL In Singularités partagées, 116, Center for contemporary arts, Montreuil October - January 2013 ABSTRACT microsillons, the first international artists in residency at the 116, invent, for the opening of the art center, a device for an artistic enquiry, following a double-strategy: inscribe the art center in the urban territory and make the inhabitants of Montreuil visible within the walls of the institution. Referring to the bourgeois atmosphere of this former master house transformed into an art center, the aim is to constitute an ‘armorial’ of the neighbourhood around the 116, in collaboration with different groups living and working there. APPROACH Realised throug a series of interviews with different groups from Montreuil, this collection of shields is displayed in a wall installation at the entrance of the 116. Every encountered person or group of people is questioned about her/ his activities, her/his place in the city and vision of the role of an art center, leading to the design of a shield. The shields are made by applying the symbolic colors of heraldry and divided into four categories (which can be read through the shapes of he shields: state services, associations, shops, others). COLLABORATION The ongoing series of interviews already involved: - L’antenne de quartier République - The Malian Women association - The self-orgnized anarchist bakery ‘La conquête du pain’ - Ecodrom, an Association working with Romani people - The Coffee shop and sewing workshop De Fil en Café - The Montreuil Tourist Office - The self-run cultura center and organic restaurant Casa Poblano - The petanque club André Blain - The chess club ‘Tous aux échecs’ - The retirement house Fondtion de Rothschild - Montreuil en éveil, an association running an adventure field. - The volunteers from the social center Lounès Matoub Exhibition view VIVE LE THÉÂTRE QUESTIONNE Detail of a cross-stiched tablecloth GROUPE L’AVENTIN VIVE LE THÉÂTRE QUESTIONNE | INTERVENTION Projects and exhibition at the Théâtre de Carouge 2012 - 2013 ABSTRACT In 2012, microsillons founded with Mathieu Menghini, the Groupe l’Aventin, which aims to develop a social mediation in the field of theater. A first project involved a group of eight women, users of the Geneva-based associationCamarada - which welcome migrant women and help them in their apprenticeship of French language. They were invited to conduct an experiment around the play Antigone. Over a period of several months, a series of meetings was held, including Backstages visit preparation to the play and the codes of Western theater, visit of the theater, viewing of the play and meeting with the director. This was followed by series of discussions and by the co-production of pieces inspired by Craftivism, objects that evoked the central topics of the group discussions (reflections on the Absolute and the Exception, civil disobedience, education, gender, etc.). An exhibition of these objects has been presented to the public inside the theater. A second collaboration, still around Antigone, involved users of the community house from Carouge. A series of meetings and discussion, before and after the play, led to the shooting of a video where the different competences of the participating teenagers and young adults were brought together. They wrote a scenario, produced a song and a choreography for that video, shot in the theater. In this short movie, the participants literally took the stage to present their own cultural interests, closer to counter-culture than to the ‘high-culture’ usually presented at the theater. Video still APPROACH The Groupe l’Aventin seeks to enable the appropriation of theater plays and institutional frame by non-specialists and to underline the potential of theater as a tool for common reflections on society. It also tries to make audible the voices of people in precarious situations. The projects are engaging the participants into visual realizations, based on the ways and means of contemporary art, as a form of reappropriation. COLLABORATION The Theatre de Carouge supported and hosted the project, involving for one chapter the Camarada association, through a group of eight women, and for the second chapter, a group of ten teenagers and young adults (and their educators) contacted through the community house of Carouge. Video still NOTES ON POSSIBLE FUTURE USES OF THE GDANK SHIPYARD “Our parents and grandparents always talk Notes on possible future uses of the shipyard about the past. We also need to think about the future.“ “The Third-Landscape, undecided fragment of the planetary garden - “The cranes could be the “signature building“ of means the sum of the areas where the humans leaves the evolution of the city. We don’t need another one.“ Three weeks of discussions in Gdansk “The Subjective Bus Line opens a space for the landscape to nature alone. Consideration of the Third Landscape dialog – and sometimes conflictual discussions “The young city project could be for any as a biological necessity conditionning the future of living beings “It’s easy to let the building collapse and then – to talk about the strikes and all the events other city. It might be because of this lack of modifies the reading of the territory and enhances places that are to say : it’s better to build something new here.“ that happened in the shipyard.“ specificity more than because of the crisis that this project exists since 15 years but was never usually considered negligible. It is the role of the policy to organize “It’s not only about the architecture of the “Do projects where the workers can be active the partition of land so as to provide in its influence’s area spaces of In May and July 2011, the collective microsillons compiled ideas and comments about possible future uses of the Gdansk “Our philosophy was to fight, but not by using force. Our weapons realized.“ buildings, but about their functions : multifunction subjects and not outside observers.“ were the books and magazines that we distributed illegally.“ indecision, which amounts to sparing the future.“ buildings allow a better, healthier city.“ shipyard, doing workshops and talking with different people in the city. This poster is the result of that process and wishes “I’m using a step by step startegy to save what Gilles Clément, “Third-Landscape Manifesto“. to show the complexity of the situation and the numerous perspectives that can be imagined for this historical industrial “The place shouldn’t become a museum but Bogdan Olszewski, “Gdansk, Pologne : dissidence et clandestinité“. can be saved from the shipyard.“ “We need one good modern architecture in place. From the proposals that were gathered, an alternative project to the one of the developers could be outlined, a kind allow a mix between workers and artists, like “While there are dominant and subordinate individuals in a cat colony, Gdansk.“ “While today we tend to live in a dematerialized digital world, “Create a garden where it’s possible to walk on of do-it-yourself town, entirely planned, built and used by the citizens of Gdansk. in the Buffet bar at the Wyspa Institute of Art.“ unlike dogs, cats don’t maintain a clearly defined hierarchy wherein there is also a new fascination for these concrete places (industrial the grass...“ each individual is ranked above or below each other individual.“ “The first artists invited to work in the shipyard “Many foreign tourists, especially American heritage) which is sometimes made sustainable through contemporary where called ‘artist’s colony’ and the name “The shipyard is a place where it is still possible Jennifer Copley, “Social Structure of Feral Cat Colonies, Behaviour and Interactions ones, are coming to Gdansk for the Solidarnosc activities.“ stayed until today.“ “With urban generation from the turn of the twentieth century picking The discussions were held with (in chronological