La Permanence

Setting up of "La Permanence", September 2017. Image: Mathilde Assier

La Permanence

In the frame­work of Koki Tanaka’s 2017 Pernod Ricard Fellowship
From September 19 to 30

Transplanting basil seedlings, waxing the wooden stairs, dis­cussing an exhi­bi­tion while cooking, plan­ning a pro­gram of events, taking care of an art­work, paying an invoice, cleaning the bar... All these are essen­tial activ­i­ties in an insti­tu­tion yet they remain invis­ible, con­cealed, even devalued. With La Permanence, Koki Tanaka (2017 Pernod Ricard Fellow) chooses to put the daily life and work of the team and its inter­locu­tors (tech­ni­cians, artists, var­ious pro­fes­sionals, friends) back at the center of the public life of Villa Vassilieff.

For sev­eral years, Koki Tanaka has been assem­bling tem­po­rary col­lec­tives revolving around activ­i­ties that try to make vis­ible sit­u­a­tions usu­ally ignored in our daily lives. During his res­i­dency in the frame of the Pernod Ricard Fellowship, Villa Vassilieff becomes a "per­ma­nence" opening up to artists, cura­tors, researchers, philoso­phers, edu­ca­tors, activists and stu­dents to dis­cuss a wide range of sub­jects - all of them having in common to ques­tion the pos­sible ways of act on the world we live in, whether through edu­ca­tion, hos­pi­tality or ecology.

Every Tuesday to Saturday from 11am to 7pm, the audi­ence is invited to share the spaces of Villa Vassilieff with a con­tin­gent of potted plants, open or closed books, kitchen smells, videos by Koki Tanaka, with the team of La Permanence and its var­ious guests fol­lowing a series of meet­ings and work­shops, announced or impro­vised.

STATEMENT BY KOKI TANAKA

"We are in the era of new wave of nation­alism, xeno­phobia and con­ser­vatism. In Europe, Asia, US we see that every­where. Ironically such right-wing move­ment imi­tates and leans from the strategy of the left. They grow up as a ‘glass roots’ move­ment by people. They try to use demo­cratic system, because they are majority, to deny mul­ti­cul­tur­alism – living together with someone who has totally dif­ferent back­ground. Fears of ter­rorism also push people’s mind to even more con­ser­va­tive. Probably sit­u­a­tion is not that easy to dis­tin­guish between ‘we’ and ‘them.’
Artists, cura­tors, art related people are basi­cally open-minded and lib­eral. So if I’m with them only I never realize that what is really going on in the society. Maybe this is the way people in art world think last couple of years. Why it happen, when it happen, how it happen… We might still think that we are living in the world from 10 years ago, but maybe not any­more. How we can rethink about our society, and its social sit­u­a­tion?

My pro­ject for Villa Vassilieff is about forming a group like a study group – to gen­erate a sit­u­a­tion of leaning each other.
Regarding a way of forming a group, I refer two method­olo­gies in a past – resis­tance and artist col­lec­tive.

During the WW2 there was resis­tance groups active in Paris when Nazi occu­pied the city, as you know. They were com­mu­nists, immi­grant workers, anti-fas­cists, and also women par­tic­i­pated too (it was rare that women was involved pol­i­tics since they didn’t have the right to vote yet). They meet at mun­dane spots like Laundromat, sports club, café and museum. And exchange their thoughts and plans of their attack or maybe just enjoy their meeting and talk freely in such dev­as­tated time.
Paris is a city for artists, but also for artist col­lec­tives. The city accepted so many immi­grant artists, asylum seeker artists, or for­eign art stu­dents to encourage them to be artists. And they form groups in the past or they started an artistic move­ment. They dis­cussed together, drunk together, worked and exhib­ited together.

Two types groups – one is hidden, the other is loose, I’d like to refer those to rethink about “our” social sit­u­a­tion in Paris/Europe/the world. I pro­pose to form a fic­tional artist col­lec­tive, and meet at places where resis­tance had secret meet­ings. It’ll be a series of activ­i­ties; a dis­cus­sion on cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, eating together, walks, film screening, music live or so. It also develops with the member of the group."

Koki Tanaka, June 18, 2017