CAPC Musée d'Art Contemporain, Galerie pour la vie
28 Mars 1997 - 28 Mars 1998
Bordeaux
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This invitation to participate in the project will also be published in local press.
The three most important obsessions phrases that were formulated by inhabitants will be rear- projected on the windows of "La Galerie pour la Vie" during the inter-exhibition periods, and will be visible only during evening twilight. The phrases will be classified according to the chronological order. The exhibition schedule of "La Galerie pour la Vie" will continue and the artists who expose their work in the Gallery will have the possibility to use these elements for their own exhibition.
Also, the I will photography the daily environment of people taking part into the project using always the same technique: all pictures will be taken with their diagonal superimposed to the largest diagonal of the site, systematically with the same lens focus to obtain the most homogenized possible framing for all the shots. Under each photograph will be written the phrase of the person living in this environment.
These shots will be displayed on line in a Web site. They will placed side by side in chronological order, forming a new virtual, metaphorical architecture of the city.
Two aspects should be visible at the same time: the recurrences and redundancies in the written obsession phrases associated with the pictures, and the flagrant contrast appearing in the aspect of dissimilar inside and outside life sites due to social differentiation.
On the other hand, the Web context enables the passage from a local a global context, therefore spreading out the synergy to an international context (the same request could be formulated to web surfers uploading their own pictures and phrases...
A workstation situated in the museum will enable people to access the Web site while at the same time the phrases are rear-projected on the windows of the exposition site ( La Galerie pour la Vie& ).
Indirectly, the project represents an interface between the public, the museum, Art and the city, since it functions through several oppositions:
... and a fundamental notion: temporality.
This exposition will not have a varnishing day. Only a small information campaign will indicate the beginning of it, but on the other hand a finishing day celebration will occur exactly one year later...
This project will be carried out over one year and will be realized through twenty-four (24) trips to Bordeaux. It will start out with a big emptiness. The different plans are to be developed throughout the year, and when the project will be achieved a year later... everything will stop by petering out or will be perpetuated through a different synergy!
This way of operating is entirely opposite to the territorial and spectacular reasoning of the standard type of exhibitions.
Usually, an exhibition is at its zenith during the night of the varnishing day which takes place in a strongly visible site, then it remains static or on the other hand, only shows its decrepit aspect. In our case, users will only feel and live through a temporal 'process', way beyond the questions of space, areas and territories.