OTHER GESTURES : USES OF HERITAGE #2 - About the Marc Vaux Archives, and other investigations

OTHER GESTURES : USES OF HERITAGE #2
About the Marc Vaux Archives, and other inves­ti­ga­tions
Friday May 13 and Saturday May 14

At Villa Vassilieff and Centre Pompidou

Continuing the enquiries addressed in the first epony­mously titled sem­inar at Bétonsalon – Center for Art and Research in 2014, Other Gestures: Uses of Heritage #2 (The Marc Vaux Archives and other inves­ti­ga­tions), con­tinues to examine the modal­i­ties of cre­ating, storing, cir­cu­la­tion and inter­pre­ta­tion of archives and her­itage — notably through dig­i­ti­za­tion. The sem­inar invites cura­tors, artists, researchers and others inter­ested in exam­ining the issues raised in the Marc Vaux Archives to share method­olo­gies, prac­tices and research; as well as ques­tions and doubts encoun­tered when working towards acti­vating art his­to­ries and rethinking the rela­tion­ships between her­itage and the con­cerns of our pre­sen­t—both in and beyond the insti­tu­tion.The role of pho­tog­ra­phy—as a her­itage object, as a doc­u­ment, as a wit­ness, as an art­work, and as an evi­dence —is at the heart of the sem­inar, under­stood within a series of enquiries. Imagined as a truant, the sem­inar will move from one place to another (archives of museums, exhi­bi­tion spaces, cin­emas…) from one image to another, from one story to another, in an an attempt to imagine other ges­tures and other usages of her­itage that are insep­a­rable from our pre­sent.

Séminaire "D’autres gestes : usages des patrimoines #2"

Friday May 13

2pm – 3pm: Visit of the exhi­bi­tion Groupe Mobile at Villa Vassilieff

With Virginie Bobin and Mélanie Bouteloup (co-cura­tors of the exhi­bi­tion) and Ellie Armon Azoulay (asso­ciate researcher of the exhi­bi­tion)

The visit will dis­cuss cer­tain inves­ti­ga­tions real­ized from and around the Marc Vaux Archives, as well as the way in which the Archives can be invested and updated by researchers and par­tic­i­pating artists.

Languages: French / English

3pm – 4pm: Images Studies

3pm – 3:20pm: Ellie Armon Azoulay (researcher asso­ci­ated to the exhi­bi­tion) : “Nav­i­gating in the Archive, ges­tures, mate­ri­ality and intu­ition ». Through some pic­tures drawn from the Archives and linked to the par­tic­i­pants, Ellie Armon Azoulay will dis­cuss ques­tion of access not as a right to enter, but as an chal­lenge while facing the exces­sive­ness. How to find point of entries, how to by pass hier­archy and cannon, how to give pres­ence to for­gotten memory or anonymity ?

Languages: French / English

3:20pm – 3:40pm: Laura Benhayoun, Gabriela Lupu, Livia Melzi and Julio Perestrelo, stu­dents in the Photography & con­tem­po­rary art Master from Paris 8 University will pre­sent some thoughts about exhi­bi­tion pho­tog­raphy, by playing with Suki Seokyeong Kang’s art­work Jeong 井 (2014-2015), shown in Groupe Mobile.

Language: French

3:40pm - 4pm : Florian Kleinefenn (pho­tog­ra­pher) : « Photography seen as trans­port, a decoy of objec­tive­ness ? ». Through his own obser­va­tions on rela­tion­ships between art­works, artists and pho­tog­ra­phers, made during his pro­fes­sional career as a pho­tog­ra­pher, Florian Kleinefenn will offer reflec­tions about objec­tive­ness, expected stan­dards, the artist will to pos­sess his work, pho­togeny, glib­ness and total sub­jec­tivity.

Language: French

4pm – 4:20pm: Discussion

4:20pm – 4:30pm: Break

4:30pm – 5:30pm: Presentation of inves­ti­ga­tions on the fic­tional artist Sophie La Rosière

By Iris Häussler (artist), Catherine Sicot (curator), Michel Menu (head of the research depart­ment, C2RMF) and Philip Monk (director, Art Gallery of York University). With the par­tic­i­pa­tion of stu­dents from the European Academy of Art in Bretagne Brest-Lorient-Quimper-Rennes.

The pro­ject Sophie La Rosière, ini­ti­ated by the artist Iris Häussler is rooted in the his­tory of Parisian moder­nity: the fic­tional artist lived in Paris in the early twen­tieth cen­tury, where she fre­quented the sis­ters Jeanne and Madeleine Smith, founders of the National Foundation for Graphic and Plastic Arts (which holds a notable pho­to­graphic col­lec­tion). For the pro­ject, Iris Häussler gathers var­ious experts (art his­to­rians, cura­tors, con­ser­va­tion­ists), to dis­cuss the artist Sophie La Rosière, assessing the evi­dence of her exis­tence, employing method­olo­gies within the canon of art his­tory to design the con­tours of this fic­ti­tious artist. This dis­cus­sion will bring for­ward the char­acter of Sophie La Rosière and inves­ti­gate the way fic­tion can turn into a method­ology for art his­tory.

Language: French (to be con­firmed)

5:30pm – 6pm: Bahman Mohassess : 60 Pieces of a Lost Body 

By Morad Montazami (Art his­to­rian, curator, researcher of art from the Middle East and the Maghreb at the Tate Modern)

Presentation of Mitra Faharani’s film Fifi hurle de joie (2013) about the ira­nian artist Bahman Mohassess, and of Morad Montazami’s book about the artist and his work.

Bahman Mohassess (1931-2010), painter, sculptor, and director, was a myth­ical figure of modern art in Iran. One of the only artists in his gen­er­a­tion to explore the human body, Mohassess did so in the face of the crit­i­cism of pro­gress and the fetishism of destruc­tion existing in this time. How then can this spirit of icon­o­clasm plunge us into an arche­o­log­ical inves­ti­ga­tion — as a way to edit an approx­i­mate body of works around which the artist claimed a right of life and death. We have attempted, if not to answer this enquiry, to at least put our­selves to the test, fol­lowing the anti-ret­ro­spec­tive exhi­bi­tion, orga­nized in Tehran in May 2015, enti­tled Bahman Mohasses: 60 Pieces of a Lost Body.

Languages: French / English

6pm – 7pm: Discussion and drinks

8pm – 10pm: Projection of Fifi Hurle de Joie by Mitra Farahani, fol­lowed by a dis­cus­sion with Mitra Farahani (artist) and Morad Montazami (Art his­to­rian, curator, researcher of art from the Middle East and the Maghreb at the Tate Modern).

Fifi hurle de joie (2013) shows the two last months of the legendary Iranian artist Bahman Mohassess’ life. This curious con­tem­po­rary Diogene is preparing to accom­plish his last art­work after a thirty years vol­un­tary exile. This work was com­mis­sioned by two admirors, Rokni and Ramin Haerizadeh – them­selves renown con­tem­po­rary artists. The plot grad­u­ally con­verges to the story of this “un­known mas­ter­piece”.

Language: Farsi, sub­ti­tled in French.

Offsite: at cinema Les 7 Parnassiens (98, bd du Montparnasse).
Full price : 9.80 and 8.80 € - Half price : 7.20 €

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Séminaire "D’autres gestes : usages des patrimoines #2"

Saturday May 14

2:30pm – 5:30pm: Law, access and usages of her­itage

2:30pm – 3:30pm: Elaine Lin (col­lec­tion man­ager, Asia Art Archive) (including 10 min­utes for ques­tions) :

Kaleidoscopic Contemporary: the case of Asia Art Archive Collection
In 2012, Asia Art Archive (AAA) pub­lished its second issue of e-journal Fieldnotes, proposing the archive as a method to illus­trate the way in which ini­tia­tives are taking it to counter, com­pli­cate, and reimagine sys­tems in which nar­ra­tives of modern and con­tem­po­rary art are being pro­duced, cir­cu­lated and under­stood. If archive is a method, what method­olo­gies can one adopt to tease out these mul­tiple nar­ra­tives amidst the pool of data and mem­o­ries? How can archive be gen­er­a­tive? This pre­sen­ta­tion will prompt these ques­tions with case studies from AAA’s col­lec­tion.

Language: English (a trans­la­tion to French will be offered)

3:30pm – 4:30pm : Sumesh Sharma (curator, Clark House Initiative) (including 10 min­utes for ques­tions). “Myth­making to decode Visual Archives »: how do we read an ani­mate archives without those in it to tell the story ?

Language: English (a trans­la­tion to French will be offered)

4:30pm – 5:30pm: Conclusion of the sem­inar, by Arno Gisinger (pho­tog­ra­pher) and Virginie Bobin (head of pro­grams, Villa Vassilieff) - fol­lowed by a dis­cus­sion

Language: French (a trans­la­tion to English will be offered)

5:30pm – 7pm  : Discussion and drinks

Séminaire "D’autres gestes : usages des patrimoines #2"

Séminaire "D’autres gestes : usages des patrimoines #2"

Séminaire "D’autres gestes : usages des patrimoines #2"

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PARTICIPANTS

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Ellie Armon Azoulay - researcher
Writer and a researcher, born 1987 (Paris, FR). Her research evolves around dif­ferent archives while using variety of his­tor­ical approaches and exper­i­mental forms of visual research. She studied his­tory and phi­los­ophy at Tel Aviv University, and she is cur­rently com­pleting an MRes in Exhibition Studies in Central Saint Martin, London. In 2016 she was asso­ciate researcher at Villa Vassilieff. Between 2009-2014 she was an art cor­re­spon­dent for Haaretz news­paper (IL) and she still is free­lance writer for var­ious art magazines and pub­li­ca­tions. As an inde­pen­dent curator, she ini­ti­ated in 2013 a con­fer­ence and series of short doc­u­men­tary films by artists for tele­vi­sion dealing with the idea of jour­nalism within con­tem­po­rary art. She is cur­rently based in Paris (FR) and recently pub­lished Local Wind, an essay book about cat­a­logues and books pub­lished by Israeli artists in the 1970s and 1980s (Tel Aviv: Public School Editions, 2014).

Mitra Farahani - artist
Born in Iran, she works between Paris and Roma. Former stu­dent of the ENSAD in Paris, her first doc­u­men­tary Juste une femme focuses on a trans­sexual person in Teheran and has been selected for Berlin’s fes­tival in 2002. In 2004, she directed a doc­u­men­tary about love and sex­u­ality in Iran ; in 2006, Behjat Sadr : le temps sus­pendu revolves around a major figure of the Iranian moder­nity. Her last film, Fifi hurle de joie (2013) has been selected in Berlin’s fes­tival, won the SCAM Prize (cinema du Réel) and the Grand Prize of La Rochelle’s doc­u­men­tary film fes­tival in 2014. Her sort-film David et Goliath n°45 (filmed at Villa Borghese in Roma) and her draw­ings serie were shown in the exhi­bi­tion United (2014) at Musée d’art mod­erne de la Ville de Paris and at MAXXI in Roma. In 2015, she devel­oped her on-going pro­ject A Vendredi Robinson at Académie de France à Rome, Villa Médicis.

Iris Häussler - artist
Born in Germany in 1962, Iris Häussler grad­u­ated from the Fine Arts Academy of Munich and cur­rently is based in Toronto, Canada. Häussler’s immer­sive instal­la­tions trace the ten­sion between his­tory, imag­i­na­tion and memory. Through detailed accounts of fic­ti­tious sto­ries, Häussler plays with the boundary of reality and fic­tion, under­scoring the tem­poral weave of his­tory.

Florian Kleinefenn - pho­tog­ra­pher
Born in Germany, Florian Kleinefenn is a pho­tog­ra­pher who lives and works Paris. Specialized in recording art, archi­tec­ture and the­atre, he works fre­quently for major French and inter­na­tional insti­tu­tions. Recently, he also pro­duced social reportages for indus­trial museums such as Musée des Beaux Arts et de la Dentelle de Calais and Musée de la Mine de Saint-Etienne. His artistic pro­duc­tions were exhib­ited at De Appel (Amsterdam), Dokumenta 8 (Kassel), Berlinische Galerie (Berlin) or Villa Gillet (Lyon).

Elaine Lin - Collection Manager, Asia Art Archive
Graduated from University College London (UCL) and School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) with a his­tory of art degree, Elaine Lin joined Asia Art Archive (AAA) in 2010 and over the years mod­er­ated the organ­i­sa­tion’s numerous archival ini­tia­tives in the region, as well as the devel­op­ment of both the library and archival col­lec­tion. Lin has given dig­ital archiving work­shops in Hong Kong and in Yangon, Myanmar.

Morad Montazami – art his­to­rian
Adjunct research-curator at Tate Modern for the Middle East and North Africa, sup­ported by the Iran Heritage Foundation, he is the author of sev­eral essays on artists such as Jeremy Deller, Jordi Colomer, Allan Sekula, Farid Belkahia, Eric Baudelaire, Walid Raad, Hamed Abdalla Farid Belkahia, Bahman Mohassess, Behjat Sadr, Francis Alÿs, Zineb Sedira. He was a co-curator for the exhi­bi­tion Unedited History: IRAN 1960-2014 at Musée d’art mod­erne de la ville de Paris and MAXXI, Rome in 2014-2015 ; and a curator for the exhi­bi­tion Fugitive Volumes : Faouzi Laatiris and the Institut national des beaux-arts de Tétouan at the Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rabat, 2016. He runs the journal Zamân as well as the pub­lishing house ZAMAN BOOKS, which covers Middle Eastern and North African studies, visual cul­ture, modern and con­tem­po­rary art.

Sumesh Sharma - curator
Sumesh Sharma co-founded the Clark House Initiative in Bombay in 2010, where he presently is the curator along with being the invited curator to the bien­nale of African con­tem­po­rary art - Dak’Art 2016 (Senegal). His prac­tice deals with alter­nate his­to­ries that are informed by the Black Arts move­ment, Socio-Economics, Immigration in the Francophone and Vernacular Equalities of Modernism. He will curate a pro­ject at the Showroom (London) and the Centre George Pompidou in 2017 and this year at the Athr Gallery in Jeddah and the New Gallery in Paris. He has curated exhi­bi­tions at the Kadist Art Foundation (Paris), Para Site (Hong Kong), Villa Vassilieff (Paris) and Stedelijk Museum Bureau (Amsterdam). He has been a res­i­dent at Manifesta Online Residency, San Art (Vietnam), Cité des Arts (Paris), and was the ICI Fellow for Senegal in 2014.