Autohistorias, season 2017

“Per­sonal expe­ri­ences – revised and in other ways redrawn – become a lens with which to reread and rewrite the cul­tural sto­ries into which we are born.”

• Gloria Anzaldúa, Now Let Us Shift... The Path Of Conocimiento…Inner Work, Public Acts, In This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions For Transformation (2002)

Europe is going through times of tur­moil, as our con­ti­nent expe­ri­ences nation­alist and sep­a­ratist polar­iza­tion and debates on iden­tity shatter social rela­tions. Moral panics over refugees and Islam shake our fragile social fabric. Europe’s dere­lic­tion pre­vents any vision for a just and open society from being brought about. Several gen­er­a­tions of migrants and their descen­dants feel forever sus­pended in time as if they had just arrived. As national nar­ra­tives fail to acknowl­edge their his­tor­ical role, a hope­less youth feel increas­ingly estranged from its insti­tu­tions. As stated by the­o­rist Fatima El-Tayeb, their omis­sion from his­tor­ical accounts within edu­ca­tional and insti­tu­tional cur­ricula should be taken as a pos­si­bility to orga­nize sub­ver­sion. It is now time we reclaim our pre­car­ious lives. We must acknowl­edge and embrace the com­plexity of our social iden­ti­ties. We must look back crit­i­cally at the mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of diverse per­spec­tives and recon­figure who is being heard. All-encom­passing nar­ra­tives used to obfus­cate prob­lems bred by the oblit­er­a­tion of migrants from European nar­ra­tives. They now fail to keep us together, and now is the time to reclaim our insti­tu­tions.

Autohistorias is the title I want to put for­ward for Bétonsalon and Villa Vassilieff’s 2017 pro­grams. I bor­rowed it from the Chicana fem­i­nist the­o­rist and poet Gloria Anzaldúa, who coined the term to define an empow­ering mode of writing grounded in deploying the sub­tleties of the per­sonal as a nar­ra­tive tool. It expresses the poten­tial of mul­tiple, ambiva­lent, unstable, and per­for­ma­tive iden­ti­ties. Autohistorias is a poetic form made of dif­ferent words, lan­guages, and modes of nar­ra­tion (tes­ti­monies, tales, theory, and poetry among others) over­coming oppo­si­tions in non-linear and sin­gular ways. We must con­tribute to dis­sem­i­nating depo­lar­ized nar­ra­tives of plural and tran­sient iden­ti­ties. Autohistorias epit­o­mizes an alter­na­tive mode of coping with dom­i­nant ide­olo­gies. Autohistorias nego­ti­ates and desta­bi­lizes bor­ders, it dis­rupts and reori­ents, cre­ating a net­work of marginal­ized and shifting iden­ti­ties. Our lives are all but fragile and pre­car­ious. Yet they are mul­tiple, col­lec­tive, and uncon­trol­lable. I want to talk about these jour­neys made of diver­sion, exal­ta­tion, and resis­tance. I am con­vinced that a shared nar­ra­tive must be built from this pecu­liar yet col­lec­tive accu­mu­la­tion.
Working in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with public col­lec­tions, notably the pho­to­graphic archive of Marc Vaux (Centre Pompidou), I embarked on the cre­ation of a res­i­dency and work­shop space ded­i­cated to reassessing the living expe­ri­ences of the many artists who con­verged to 20th cen­tury Paris. We can write another his­tory of Modernism, one that is no longer defined by the myth of indus­trial pro­gress but rather built from indi­vid­uals adrift, shifting cul­tures, and exile. I sin­cerely think art can help us envi­sion alter­na­tive his­to­ries and inves­ti­gate ignored and marginal­ized life sto­ries that echo their col­lec­tive con­text.

Our 2017 pro­grams will be an oppor­tu­nity to entwine a plu­rality of worlds. Bétonsalon and Villa Vassilieff will create a hub for dia­logue addressing our cur­rent polit­ical sit­u­a­tion. We aspire to gen­erate an economy of con­vivi­ality, where vis­i­tors can spend time chat­ting around art­works and dis­cussing per­sonal expe­ri­ences, col­lec­tive mem­o­ries, and hard­ships of living together. The newly refur­bished Bétonsalon will bring about new vis­iting and working con­di­tions, and offer two solo exhi­bi­tions by artists Emmanuelle Lainé and Candice Lin, both devel­oped in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with Paris Diderot University and the “Académie vivante” (Living Academy) research lab­o­ra­tory. Villa Vassilieff will be turned into a house inhab­ited by seven pro­jects. A con­stel­la­tion of inter­na­tional guest cura­tors and fel­lows in res­i­dence will under­take research pro­jects min­gling his­tor­ical and con­tem­po­rary prac­tices.

I want to account for those artists who know how to express their unstable selves, sin­gular roots, and rav­eling routes with sin­cerity and com­mit­ment. Articulating feel­ings and strug­gles is a nec­es­sary starting point to aug­ment mem­o­ries and create sub­ver­sive audi­ences. I yearn for a pro­gram per­me­ated by human beings and their emo­tions, by pas­sion, com­pas­sion, fear, protest, and fragility. While exploring the myriad ways in which artists use these mate­rials, we will be con­fronted to ter­ri­to­rial insta­bility and tem­poral dis­junc­ture. We will be looking closely at indi­vidual prac­tices through under­ex­plored stand­points.

We can imagine a shared his­tory. A his­tory that is not imposed from the top, but rather col­lec­tively elab­o­rated from pecu­liar­i­ties and odd itineraries in a frag­mented world. In trou­bled times of divi­sion and con­flict, those his­to­ries help us develop translocal forms of resis­tance and invent new cos­mopolitan hori­zons.

Mélanie Bouteloup