L'Officiel Art International N°31 -October/November/December 2019

L 15085 - 31 - F: 7,00 € - RD

Talia Chetrit, Becca Albee, Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Hope Atherton, Matthew Barney, Christopher Bollen, Camille Henrot, Mauro Hertig, Yngve Holen, Roni Horn, Florian Krewer, Liz Magic Laser, Ari Marcopoulos, Sarah Morris, Isamu Noguchi, Raymond Pettibon, Martine Syms, Francesco Vezzoli, Michael Wang

INTERMISSION guest curated by Olympia Scarry

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

ISSN 2262-1415

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William Karrick, Le Semeur, vers 1860 – Collection Ruth + Peter Herzog, Jacques Herzog und Pierre de Meuron Kabinett (Stiftung), Bâle Emmanuelle Lainé, Incremental Self – Transparent Bodies, 2017 – © Adagp, Paris, 2019 Liu Xiaodong, Mining Jade I, 2012 – Courtesy du studio Liu Xiaodong, 2012 – © Adagp, Paris, 2019 Albert Fernique, Fabrique de gaz d’Ivry, vers 1878 – Collection Ruth + Peter Herzog, Jacques Herzog und Pierre de Meuron Kabinett (Stiftung), Bâle Andreas Gursky, Katar, 2012 – Courtesy de l’artiste – © Adagp, Paris, 2019

…et labora 16.11.2019 — 13.04.2020

PHOTOGRAPHIES DE LA COLLECTION RUTH + PETER HERZOG ŒUVRES DE MIKA ROTTENBERG YURI PATTISON EMMANUELLE LAINÉ ANDREAS GURSKY THOMAS STRUTH LIU XIAODONG CYPRIEN GAILLARD EX-VOTO PROVENÇAUX

35ter RUE DU DOCTEUR-FANTON, 13200 ARLES FONDATION-VINCENTVANGOGH-ARLES.ORG

GeorG Baselitz tiMe

Paris Pantin octoBer 2019 – JanUarY 2020

LIU WEN

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L’ O F F I C I E L A R T

N ° 31

C U R ATO R O LY M P I A S C A R R Y

E D I TO R I A L C O M M I T T E E V I C T O I R E D E P O U R TA L È S BENJAMIN EYMÈRE M A R I E -J O S É E J A L O U

M A N AG I N G E D I TO R

A R T D I R E C TO R

YA M I N A B E N A Ï

JENNY MANNERHEIM

PRODUCERS JOSHUA GL ASGOW ELÉONORE JALOU

C O N T R I BU TO RS

Christopher Bollen, Sarah Demeuse, Mauro Hertig, Erik Lindman Mata, Brett Littman, Florence Meyssonnier, Michael Wang, Sarah Workneh Photographer: Henry Roy. Copy editors: Nicolas-Emmanuel Granier, Isla McMillan T R A N S L AT O R S

Patrick Hersant, Nicholas Manning, Matt Reeck.

E XECUTIVE PUBLISHER EMMANUEL RUBIN

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P U B L I S H E D BY L E S É D I T I O N S J A L O U

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L’Officiel Art is published quarterly in April, June, October and December — Total : 4 issues by Les Editions Jalou

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N ° 31

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PUBLICATION DIRECTOR MARIE-JOSÉ JALOU

L’ O F F I C I E L A R T

GIUSEPPE PENONE mat rice di linfa 15-27 octobre 2019 Palais d’Iéna Siège du Conseil économique, social et environnemental

9 Place d’Iéna 75016 Paris

L’ O F F I C I E L A R T

N ° 31

C O N T EN TS

I.

Agenda

24 – 71

II.

Corporate Collections

72 – 95

Editors’ note

74 – 75

Societe Generale - Frédéric Oudéa

76 – 81

Renault - Ann Hindry

82 – 87

Colas Group - Hervé Le Bouc

88 – 93

Panorama

94 – 95

By Emmanuel Rubin and Yamina Benaï

Inter view by Emmanuel Rubin and Yamina Benaï

Inter view by Yamina Benaï

Inter view by Yamina Benaï

III.

Intermission

96 – 223

Michael Wang

98 – 105

Roni Horn

106 – 115

Talia Chetrit

116 – 123

The Agitated Now

124 – 129

by Carol Becker

Olympia Scarry

130 – 135

Mauro Hertig

136 – 141

Intermission text by Erik Lindman Mata

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COVER PICTURE 1: Talia Chetrit, Face #1, 1994-2017; inkjet print; 35.56 × 22.86 cm.

COVER PICTURE 2: Yngve Holen, Jaguar photographed by Raffaella Russi in the Mamiraua Sustainable Development Reserve, 23 rd of August, 2015. © ADAGP, Paris 2019 for the works of its members.

CONTENTS

VANESSA PARADIS

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L’ O F F I C I E L A R T

N ° 31

C O N T EN TS

Hope Atherton

142 – 143

Yngve Holen

144 – 153

Martine Syms

154 – 161

Isamu Noguchi: Environments of Leisure

162 – 167

Christopher Bollen

168 – 173

Florian Krewer

174 – 179

Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili

180 – 185

Becca Albee

186 – 191

Matthew Barney

192 – 193

Liz Magic Laser

194 – 199

Francesco Vezzoli

200 – 205

Camille Henrot

206 – 211

Sarah Morris

212 – 219

Ari Marcopoulos

220 – 223

By Brett Littman

By Sarah Workneh

By Sarah Demeuse

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CONTENTS

L’ O F F I C I E L A R T

N ° 31

C U R ATO R ’ S L E T T E R INTERMISSION As abstract as time is, it is a concept. We like to generalize the idea of it, but time is in fact a notion that is as individualized as our thoughts. Everyone lives it, thinks it and wastes it, in their own way.

It’s an idea on a global scale that gives a sense of unity, a sense of security, a sense that “we are all in it together,” but in reality we are all on our own clock. Except in some parts of the world, we do live in a kind of World Time that trespasses all borders through the digitized spheres; if only that were true, not just in the electronic bands widths and times. As an artist, time does stand still for ideas. Hence, I reached out to great minds for this issue to get an insight into different perspectives on the subject. A kind of Intermission, to pause, to think, to let the curtain down for a minute and see what happens. Michael Wang, proposes a Drowned World in which our current climate change is reverting nature back to the earth’s First Forest, returning full circle to 300 million years ago. While Roni Horn, records Remembered Words between the years 2012-2013. Talia Chetrit captures that tender age of Sonic Youth and the 1990s or l’Age Ingrat through her photographic diary of her teenage years between the ages from 13-15. Writer Carol Becker expresses perceptions of time and the contemplative space of art. I shot photos of aircraft windows inflight, capturing an Intermission on Airplane Mode through landscapes of skies which are nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Mauro Hertig creates a musical score through the rolling sound of suitcases and airplane engines in The Perfect Passivity, an opera based performance embodying the airport as the Intermission. Hope Atherton casts time. Yngve Holen speaks to neuroscientists about their research into the behavioral psychology of monkeys in The Animal House is Closed. He travels deep into the Amazon to speak to the National Institute for Science Technology and Innovation for Amazonian Biodiversity to discuss the economics of deforestation, as: Of course No one pays the Amazonas for that Function from his ETOPS magazine issues Headache and Amazonas. Writer Brett Littman discusses Isamu Noguchi’s research through never before seen archival photographs

by Noguchi himself of his search for Environments of Leisure through a seven year grant to travel across the world. Writer Christopher Bollen travels to Cambodia to photograph every clock he encounters within a 24 hour period in Phnom Penh. Prior to 1975, his birth year, also known as The Year Zero, owning a clock was punishable by death. Florian Krewer takes a line for walk by essentially killing time. Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili captures the markings of time. Becca Albee dives into geological Deep time. Matthew Barney shares his latest drawing Diana and Actaeon, drawing on classical mythology. Liz Magic Laser hires via Fiverr, the new Task Rabbit app, Zahid the graphic designer from Pakistan who stars in her latest experimental reality TV show, to layout her contribution to this issue coming full circle. Time Pressure follows the lives of five gig workers who rely on work they find through online platforms such as Fiverr under unrealistic time constraints.

Francesco Vezzoli invites us into his new studio, filled with collected artifacts from all different periods. Camille Henrot reveals the workings of an Intermission through Wet Job, the breast pump series; expressed through words by Sarah Demeuse, exploring how to give the body a break through mechanisms. The project extends its reach into film, commissioning artists Martine Syms, Ari Marcopoulos and Sarah Morris; each creating an Intermission on the screen. Martine proposes an ideological athlete in the year 2050 ,filmed on a robotic arm morphing human and machine in Capricorn. While Ari captures virtuoso heavy metal speed guitarist Mick Barr defying time through sound in Annwn Current Incarnation. Sarah specifically shoots her film in time to capture the fleeting moment in which the spectacle of the blossoming of the Sakura tree occurs at the infamous Osaka castle, the ghost capital, in her epic fictious documentary Sakura.

With a very special thank you to Chanel for their support.

by Olympia Scarry

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C U R AT O R ’ S L E T T E R

CHANEL .COM

ANNA MOUGLALIS

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L’ O F F I C I E L A R T

N ° 31

Q U OT E

R a y m o n d P e t t i b o n f o r L’ O f f i c i e l A r t , 2 019 .

Raymond Pettibon, No Title (This being the...), 2019 © Raymond Pettibon, Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner

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QUOTE

ART CONTEMPORAIN MERCREDI 27 NOVEMBRE 2019

Pierre Soulages. Peinture, 200 x 162 cm, 14 mars 1960. Huile sur toile

Pour tout renseignement, veuillez contacter Julie Ralli +33 1 53 30 30 55 ralli-j@tajan.com Espace Tajan 37 rue des Mathurins 75008 Paris 33 1 53 30 30 30 Agrément N°2001-006 du 7 novembre 2001 - Commissaires-priseurs habilités : A. de Benoist - F. David - E. Kozlowski - J. Remy - P.-A. Vinquant

KEIRA KNIGHTLEY

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L’ O F F I C I E L A R T

N ° 31

I . Agenda Bet tencour t Schueller Foundat ion , Palais de Tok yo, Paris 26 – 29 Firs t Biennale of Con temporar y Ar t , Rabat 30 – 31 Kat inka Bock at Lafayet te An t icipat ions , Paris 32 – 35 OGR , Turin 36 – 37 Edi t h Dek ynd t , Düsseldor f, Hambour g , Venezia 38 – 42

Fur la Foundat ion , Milan 58 David Wojnarowicz at New Galerie, Paris , and Mudam , Luxembour g 60 – 62 Roederer Foundat ion , Reims , Paris 64 – 65 Audemars Piguet , Basel , Venice Biennale 66 – 67 “ In Goude We Trus t ! ”, Chanel , Milan 68 – 71

Giuseppe Penone at Palais d’Iéna , Paris 44 – 46 Hans Har tung at Musée d’ar t moder ne, Paris 48 Asia Now Fair, Paris 50 “ Le Rêveur de la forêt ”, Musée Zadkine, Paris 52 Mon t resso Ar t Foundat ion , Mar rakesh 54 Ar t Düsseldor f, Ger many 56

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Texts and interviews

by Yamina Benaï

AGENDA

CAPITAL CAPITAL CAPITAL CAPITAL CAPITAL CAPITAL CAPITAL CAPITAL

L’ O F F I C I E L A R T

N ° 31

Fondation Bettencourt Schueller: 20 Years of Commitment to Craftsmanship For the past twenty years, one of the primar y aims of the Fondation Bet tencour t Schueller has been to champion and support French craftsmanship. To celebrate this anniversary, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris is staging a multisensory exhibition exploring a variety of periods, media, and skills.

L’Officiel Art speaks to Olivier Brault, director general of the foundation, and Laurent Le Bon, curator of the exhibition.

L’OFFICIEL ART: What prompted you to call on Laurent Le Bon, director of the Musée Picasso Paris, to curate the exhibition “The Mind Begins and Ends in the Fingertips”?

OLIVIER BRAULT: In our commitment to the crafts, our interest has mainly been in extracting them from the confinement in which our society places them, crossing borders, and showing their profoundly contemporary dimension. It seemed to us that Le Bon’s generous, willingly transgressive, and open-ended gaze was relevant to the curatorship of this exhibition. We hoped that this event would allow us to take a step forward in offering the public the best of French knowledge.

The Fondation Bettencourt Schueller provided financial support for the establishment in 2017 of Toguna, a place for exchange and sharing created by artists and craftspeople, which broadens the type of work on display for the visitors of the Palais de Tokyo. Your presence in this institution has now been visible for some time.

This is indeed our fifth collaboration. We entered into a partnership with the Palais de Tokyo precisely because this atypical institution was the ideal place to show the contemporary value of craft. Jean de Loisy, who was then president, sought to take a step toward artisans/artists with regard to material, believing this was a fertile source of contemporary art and creation. We committed to a multi-year agreement that allowed us to set up three exhibitions: “The Use of Forms” in 2015, “Double I” in 2016, and “Another Banana Day for the Dream Fish” in 2018. Toguna, if not strictly speaking an exhibition, represents another form of investment in creation by craftspeople, with a view to installing sustainable equipment at the Palais de Tokyo. “The Mind Begins and Ends in the Fingertips” is thus our fifth step in this direction.

Laurent Le Bon, you are the exhibition’s curator – why did you call on the artist Isabelle Cornaro for her mise en espace?

LAURENT LE BON: I immediately suggested a collective logic, and from the outset the idea of a scenography became clear. The architecture of the Palais de Tokyo, built in the 1930s, is composed of large spaces bathed in natural light, which could easily be compared to the flexibility so sought after by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers for the Centre Pompidou. The materials are, of course, very different from those of the Pompidou, closer to the spirit of artisans; it was thus exciting, from these noble materials and this vast plateau, to create a story incarnated in a mise en espace. Admittedly, we could have used professional scenographers, but we chose to trust an artist with a different outlook, who was able to respond to the bold choices of the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller. In her past work and in recent installations, Cornaro has shown her extraordinary sense of materials and the relationship between perspectives. We thus did not create a chronology between a concept that I would

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Jacques-Edouard Gatteaux, La main d’Ingres tenant un crayon, 1841; plaster mold casting. Photo: © Beaux-Arts de Paris, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais.

propose and that would then induce a mise en espace: we had considered from the beginning that we would work in pairs in order to unfold a story in four chapters. We should also mention two important artistic advisers and longtime associates: Jean de Loisy [president of the Palais de Tokyo from 2011 to 2018, current director of the Beaux-Arts de Paris] and Alain Lardet, cofounder of the Designer’s Days festival in Paris and artistic director of “Homo Faber” [a Fondation Bettencourt Schueller exhibition in Venice in 2018], who has an encyclopedic knowledge of the world of crafts. As a quartet, we thus returned to the etymology of the word “curator” – one who cares, who listens.

The story that we tell throughout the 1,000 sq m of the Palais de Tokyo celebrates twenty years of the foundation in a way that we wanted to make festive. We did not have carte blanche, and this was exciting because freedom is born out of constraint.

This constraint was, in our eyes, a road map that invited us to journey through the awards handed out by the foundation, and the different stages that marked the Liliane Bettencourt Prize for the Intelligence of the Hand. The award winners and their creations were the elements of a vocabulary from which we created sentences and a story.

The word “collective” has an extremely strong meaning within the foundation.

O.B.: We work in perfect coherence, and this alliance of talents within the collective that Le Bon has assembled illustrates our intention: we do not want to take a stand in order to try to determine if craftspeople are artists or not. Balthus said that he hated the word “artist” because, as soon as it was pronounced, the respect due to craftspeople would disappear. We want to show that this extraordinary treasure of French skill has its rightful place on the French stage today.

AGENDA

N ° 31

L’ O F F I C I E L A R T

Kristin McKirdy, Claustra, 2019. © Kristin McKirdy.

AGENDA

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L’ O F F I C I E L A R T

N ° 31

Frédéric Richard, Emmanuel Joussot et Eric Benqué, Sellettes, 2012. © Sophie Zénon pour la Fondation Bettencourt Schueller.

L.L.B.: And what better word than the one chosen by the Bettencourt SchuelleAnd what better word than the one chosen by the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller for one of its awards, “Dialogues”? In the dialogue, we are on an equal footing.

Sometimes, the ego of some artists requires special attention, but it is the principle of collective exhibitions that everyone must find his or her place. It is thus logical that the foundation should be welcomed into the “Future, Former, Fugitive” season at the Palais de Tokyo, which highlights the French scene – though our purpose is very different, we are also celebrating creation.

Through its work carried out in recent years, the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller has helped to change the way the arts and crafts sector is viewed in France.

O.B.: What interests us is to cross borders. It’s a way to change people’s perspectives. This question has been central since the beginning of the foundation: the reason for our commitment to the art profession for twenty years is the feeling of a very profound injustice experienced by Liliane Bettencourt, who, having been exposed very early to Ruhlmann furniture, was awakened to its beauty and the particular genius of the craftspeople. France had overvalued the most conceptual and most abstract forms of intelligence, whereas Bettencourt thought like Paul Valéry, who wrote: “From the prodigious hand of the artist / Equal to and rival of his thought / One is nothing without the other.” This was her very natural way of thinking, and we have kept this conviction as the foundation of our commitment to the crafts. We cannot reconcile ourselves with the idea that there is a minor form of creative engagement. Though opinions are evolving, there is still a

28

reluctance among young people to choose manual crafts, because our society is still imbued with the negative perspective with which it considers these trades.

Hence the relevance of the name of the award: the Liliane Bettencourt Prize for the Intelligence of the Hand. How did you organize the four chapters of the exhibition?

L.L.B.: We wanted to create a threshold effect, with a cozy atmosphere and different lighting. Our project presents the diversity of craftspeople within a plastic unit resulting from the work of Cornaro. On the wall is a lesser-known quote from Valéry: “The mind begins and ends in the fingertips.” The strength of the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller is its contemporary perspective, which comes to be focused on heritage and on hands through multidisciplinarity. We went to the École des Beaux-Arts, which is full of masterpieces that are never or rarely exhibited. To be a museum curator is also to bring things into the light. We wanted to show a wide variety of media and are thus exhibiting the first x-rays of hands preserved by the Beaux-Arts, but also casts made from nature, photographs, and books from the beginnings of the printing press, on which a curator at the Beaux-Arts noticed the addition of drawings of hands. And what do all these hands do?

They are waiting. They are open, ready to welcome the tool.

We then enter the chapter of the workshop, in order to show how creative processes are highlighted, sometimes museographically, at the frontier of the industry, with fascinating objects such as looms, molds, and tools. This allows us to pay tribute to institutions such as: the Meisenthal International Glass Art Center; the world capital of tapestry, Aubusson; and the Troyes Center for Tools and

AGENDA

N ° 31

L’ O F F I C I E L A R T

Prix Liliane Bettencourt pour l’intelligence de la main 2019 - (Dialogues) : Guillaume Lehoux, André Fontes and Ludwig Vogelgesang, Argo, 2019. © J. Pepion.

Worker Thought. Georges Henri Rivière, founder of the Museum of Arts and Popular Traditions, placed a Picasso ceramic and a rustic ceramic pot at the entrance of the collection. It is this equality that the foundation wants to defend today. The photographer Sophie Zénon shows our laureates at work: these photos are fascinating, in that they present the link between the gaze and the hand.

O.B.: We have worked with Zénon for years, she is a photographer and an artist with a remarkable portfolio. She has an extraordinary eye and the talent to showcase the 110 laureates who have made the history of this award for twenty years. Believing in people is a fundamental position of the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller. We infinitely respect institutions, we support them and count on them, but one conviction comes from the family of our founders: in the end, it is men and women who make the difference in life.

L.L.B.: After this gallery of portraits, we discover the objects, in a spectacular space with a very high ceiling. We chose to leave it in its original strength, bathed in natural light, slightly filtered in order to protect the works. We must imagine here a parade, a festive moment. With Lardet, we have been attentive to choosing the best artists and to the dialogue with each of them. We also asked the artisans to talk about their works, and their words are presented near each object. The journey then leaves the real in order to enter the digital world. By way of a panorama, projections allow one to circumnavigate the world and the foundation’s twenty years of support for the arts, to show the diversity of these activities (one of the most recent occurred after the fire at Notre-Dame cathedral, where the support for the crafts was made concrete). Thus, after “Prélude,”

AGENDA

“Atelier,” and “Grande Galerie,” this final chapter, entitled “Constellation,” reveals the multiplicity of talents and the links that are woven between them.

This exhibition is didactic: it shows and explains. But it also expresses the notion of happiness and sharing.

O.B.: At the origin of this exhibition is our birthday: a joyous party.

The bouquets of amaranths arranged throughout the exhibition are a metaphor for the sensory bouquet, the bouquet of pleasure that we would like to offer visitors, with the help of all those who have been involved. Crafts offer us beautiful works, a beauty that is related to pleasure. In our increasingly hectic, fast-paced world, there is an even more intense, true joy in meeting craftsmen and women who, in many cases, have made life choices that are radically different from ours. Opting for an austere life, confronting a resistant material, faced with complicated gestures to learn and precarious economies, real-life difficulties and a lack of recognition in France. These craftspeople nevertheless offer us wonderful objects, shaped by hand, unique or in very limited series; they conceal a history, a territorial anchorage, a choice of subjects that speaks to us as a country – and it is of ourselves that we speak through them. The visitor to the Palais de Tokyo – who is also a consumer and citizen of our time – will find joy and happiness in the presence of artisans.

“The Mind Begins and Ends at Your Fingertips”, (“L’esprit commence et finit au bout des doigts”), Palais de Tokyo, Paris, from October 16 to November 10, 2019, part of the “Future, Former, Fugitive” (“Futur, ancien, fugitif, une scène française”) season. palaisdetokyo.com, fondationbs.org

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The First Rabat Biennale: Focus on Female Artists

Bahïa Bencheikh-El-Fegoun and Meriem Achour Bouakkaz, H’na Barra (Nous, dehors) , 2014; film. Courtesy: the artist. ©Allers-Retours Films.

Morocco is consolidating its engagement with contemporary art with the first edition of a biennale that brings together exclusively female artists. Abdelkader Damani, head curator of the event and director of the Frac Centre-Val de Loire in France, speaks to us about the genesis of the idea.

L’OFFICIEL ART: Which semantic and creative fields are expressed in the title of the first Rabat Biennale of Contemporary Art, “An Instant Before the World.”

ABDELKADER DAMANI: “An Instant Before the World” is an excursion into religious and scientific thinking about the creation of the universe. Both consider the instant that precedes the beginning of the story to be mysterious, whether it be the Big Bang or the mythology of creation in six days, to mention only the example of the monotheistic religions. The “world” in the biennale’s title is to be understood in the sense of “making a world” or the “conditions of a world”, thus going beyond the geographical and spatial comprehension of this term. The instant is, in this new configuration, the totality of duration. And this is precisely the magic of a work that makes the instant of its own creation the totality of time that precedes and succeeds it. It is in this sense that every work, if it is successful, becomes a refuge for worlds, and constitutes the memory of all human beings. It is then reasonable to believe in this conscious or unconscious journey on which the artist embarks in order to try to see, touch, and feel this instant before the beginning of stories, to return to it by way of the memory of a work that escapes determinism.

This is surely the most important subversion, and is why some political or religious regimes are fundamentally set on controlling art. To resist is the capacity to give birth to this instant before. Just look at the Algerian

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people, who since February 22, 2019 [when widespread protests began against the incumbent regime] have created the conditions for a new world. Moreover, every Friday [when the protests take place], the streets of Algiers and all the cities of Algeria are the most successful exhibition of the meeting between human beings and their dreams.

In addition to your career as an art historian, you are trained as a philosopher. How does this affect your vision and your curatorial work?

I first studied architecture, a discipline that intersects with philosophy as “the art of organization” (Deleuze). I should make it clear, however, that I am only a lover of philosophy, a guest of the discipline, in a way.

The first thing that philosophy allowed me to understand was that an exhibition is not a place of answers, but of collisions and experiences.

Philosophy teaches us to question what we take to be obvious truths, and authorizes unexpected encounters. Thus, the work of a curator becomes that of generating questions. Thinking philosophically is, for me, an activity that seeks to identify possible encounters between materials that contain thoughts, which the works themselves are, but in this case they are not the only ones – the most important protagonist for this purpose is the spectator, the visitor. This is also to realize that an exhibition produces a space for absences: “This or that is missing from the exhibition.” But this lack represents the territory required by the public in order to move within the exhibition, and make it exist.

How did you conceive and organize this biennale, which brings together only female artists? What concepts and main thrusts have you chosen to highlight? How does the exhibition fit into the city of Rabat?

All exhibitions must be situated. So I decided to make the city – its physical and historical territory – our first invited artist. This resulted in the itinerary of

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From left to right: Fella Tamzali Tahari, Arachnée , 2015; graphite and acrylic on canvas. Courtesy: the artist. © Fella Tamzali Tahari.

Bouchra Ouizguen, Eléphant, 2019. Drawing: Moulay Youssef Elkahfaï, Procession, 2019. © Moulay Youssef Elkahfaï / Compagnie O.

the visit and the choice of the exhibition site. The second decision was to remember this city. The memory that I refer to, because I was not yet of this world, is the singer Oum Kalthoum in Rabat in 1968. The exceptional communion of the artist with her audience was spectacular. Between these two references – a territory and a voice, a poem and music – I had the necessary anchorage in order to bring the project to fruition. Then came the subsequent question of the conditions for a biennale. The answer lies in the way we chose the artists, on the one hand, and on the other, in the exhibition’s form. From the first working sessions, I announced the decision to invite only female artists. That was the most pressing thing. The form would follow later, with three concepts that I conceived of as intuitions as much as convictions. There is above all the recognition of wandering as a unique destiny. Wandering proceeds as much from waiting as from movement, without being synonymous with one or the other. A wait allows one to be struck by the world, to receive it not by inheritance, but by way of thought. It is this place of the “after,” where there is no more doubt that one can reach out to whoever is arriving next. Because they are arriving, the immigrants, in order to remind us of our previous selves, whom we have forgotten. We are the immigrants of a world of wandering. And this is our only future, our eternal beauty.

We may add to this the attempt to define art as a nostalgia for imbalances. To speak of a nostalgia for imbalances is to say that each work of art is suspended within its own instant. Every work of art suspends every instant. A work of art always remembers what is going to occur.

It is an inverted memory. Works prepare in us our imbalances, in order to reconcile us with what is coming.

And finally, there is the feeling of what I call a “subversive tenderness.”

Since I have spoken about and begun to think about subversive tenderness, many people have asked me, with surprise, what it is all about. To tell you the truth, subversive tenderness may have no explanation, but it does have names: it is Carola Rackete [the ship captain taken to court in Italy over migrant rescues] who challenges Matteo Salvini [Italy’s former minister of the interior]. She defies him, and all of Europe, with one gesture: to save a life. She does not confront him. She saves a life. She does not fight. She saves a life. She does not flee. She saves a life. Without making

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of these three thoughts physical chapters or boundaries within the exhibition’s itinerary, we find in each room references to these three paths.

“In order to define the urgencies of a moment of creation, it is necessary to pay off one’s debts. To make an inventory of regrets, of things forgotten even more than what has not been said … and which may be screamed into the face of the world … Our debt is fundamentally with regard to women,” you write.

What are the contours and the content of what you call “debt”?

Do you make a distinction between Western countries and Arab countries, where women’s situation, whatever some may say about it, is culturally and religiously very different?

Women’s inequality is an anthropological and historical issue. It must be remembered, for instance, that in ancient times a woman’s belly was the property of man. That in pre-Islamic times, in the Arabian Peninsula, girls were buried alive at birth. And, strangely, the explorer Ibn Battuta (1304–1368) expresses his astonishment, during a trip to Sudan, at the freedom enjoyed by women in a Muslim country.

From this point of view, the distinction between Western and Arab countries does not stand up to analysis.

The question is elsewhere. There is, in fact, in the very structure of what we call humanity, an injustice with respect to women. The debt is as old as our existence. The second paradigm that makes it possible to understand the contours of this debt is that of the role of women in the evolution of civilizations. Women keep territories and maintain balances. I am convinced that we owe it to women that we still have a world. However, you are right to point out that in postcolonial societies, and more specifically in the Muslim tradition, women are living, in our contemporary moment, an unprecedented tragedy. To speak personally, I come from a world where, until a short time ago, one had to apologize before pronouncing the word “woman.” We refused that women be named. It is an extreme form of violence.

“An Instant Before the World,” Rabat Biennale of Contemporary Art, until December 18, 2019. www.biennale.ma

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Katinka Bock Transforms Lafayette Anticipations

Since spring 2018, the Galeries Lafayette Foundation has been located in an industrial building in the Marais district of Paris, redesigned from floor to ceiling by Rem Koolhaas. In that space, an audacious program has been set in motion that capitalizes on the flexibility of the space, which has four mobile floors, 875 sq m of exhibition space, and workshops in the basement. For her first Paris exhibition, Katinka Bock has installed a group of new works.

Born in Germany in 1976, Katinka Bock graduated from Lyon’s Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and remains a fixture in metropolitan France. Now living in Paris, she won the 2012 Prix Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard and is a finalist for the 2019 Prix Marcel Duchamp. However, she has not previously exhibited in Paris. In addition to what Bock’s work conveys through its own

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materiality, the show at the Galeries Lafayette Foundation building, known as Lafayette Anticipations, is also symbolic. Bock creates sculptures, installations, and performance art that attempt to revive the “physicality” of a location in its historical, political, and social identity. For instance, the Anzeiger-Hochhaus building in Hanover caught her attention for the political-cultural myth it represents – it was where the newspapers Stern and Der Spiegel were founded. This red-brick building with a copper dome was recently renovated to mark its historical importance and Bock was permitted to recover some of the copper. In her exhibition she highlights similarities between the Anzeiger-Hochhaus building and Lafayette Anticipations: both are places for the production of thought and its translation. The artist has planned a huge suspended installation, a poetic expression of equilibrium and a vision of materiality and time.

Katinka Bock, “Commotion at Higienópolis,” from October 9, 2019 to January 5, 2020, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris.

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Left page: Katinka Bock, Smog III-IX, 2017-18; bronze; variable dimensions; Sonar: Tomorrow’s Sculpture, installation view, Kunstmuseum Winterthur, 2018.

Photo: Johannes Schwartz. Courtesy: Galerie Jocelyn Wolff.

Above: Katinka Bock, Rauschen, 2019 (work under production).

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Katinka Bock, T-toxic, 2019; oakwood, bronze; 130 x 112 x 30 cm. Photo: François Doury. Courtesy: private collection, Portugal.

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Above: Katinka Bock, Sechs Flächen und ein Raum, 2008; clay; 280 x 160 cm. Photo: Olivier Dancy. Courtesy: Galerie Jocelyn Wolff and the artist.

Below left: Sculpture du soir (with One of Hundred, Palermo), 2019. Céramique, bois, papier.

140 x 50 x 35 cm. Below right: One meter balance , 2012. Barre en fer, tissu, aluminium, bois, citrons. 600 x 2,5 x 2,5 cm

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OGR, A New Chapter

OGR, Turin. Courtesy: OGR.

Built at the height of the Italian railroad’s popu l ar i t y, Tu r in’s OG R ( O f f icine G rand i R i paraz ion i ) hou sed t rai n - r epai r wor ks hops for a century, before being transformed in 2017 by the young curator Nicola Ricciardi into a dual-function institution – at once an art center and an incubator for technology projects.

Two huge rectangular wings are joined by a transept of 1,500 sq m, housing a restaurant with a single 25m-long table capable of seating ninety diners. The motif is clear: inclusivity, collectivity, diversity. In this part of northern Italy, where the far-right Lega Nord holds sway, it’s not without reason that this theme is emphasized. “OGR is above all else a space of unification,” says Massimo Lapucci, the managing director.

“And it’s not just for artists, for youth, and for entrepreneurs, but for all of the public, whatever their walk of life and interests.”

OGR Cult (9,000 sq m) and OGR Tech (13,000 sq m) aim to bring together the best of the visual arts on both a national and international stage, and to operate as a think tank for innovative and socially useful digital technology, fostering start-ups, education, and research.

The idea was ambitious, and required determination and audacity to get off the ground. After serving the railroad for decades, OGR, established in 1895, was abandoned in 1992 and slated for demolition. Then, in 2013, the Fondazione CRT – a philanthropic organization active most notably in the preservation of cultural heritage

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and scientific research – purchased the site. Three years and 100 million euros later, OGR announced its new form.To launch the redesigned site, the Italy- and US-educated art critic and curator Nicola Ricciardi, born in 1985, gathered together an auspicious assembly of musicians – Giorgio Moroder, Elisa, Ghali, Omar Souleyman, the Chemical Brothers, and the Atomic Bomb! Band – to provide free Saturday concerts over three consecutive weeks in order to spread the word about OGR. The project draws its integrity from presenting performing arts and contemporary visual arts within the complex’s industrial architecture, which has unique stylistic and spatial features. The sheer size (almost 3,000 sq m of exhibition space with 16m-high ceilings, along with the transept linking the two buildings) offers a sense of new possibilities for performances, large installations and monumental works.

Fittingly, the opening of OGR was accompanied by three site-specific works: Procession of Reparationists, an installation by the South African artist William Kentridge, on display until the end of December 2019; an immersive cinematic work by the British collective United Visual Artists (UVA); and an exhibition by the Italian artist Patrick Tuttofuoco. At the center of OGR Cult are two spaces: the Duomo, a 350 sq m space with a 19ft. ceiling that is dedicated to conferences, artist presentations, and roundtables; and the Sala Fucine, with 2,750 seats for a variety of live events (concerts, dance, and theatre). “Our goal is to enter into dialogue with the largest international institutions, whose programming inspires us by the way they have achieved meaningful work weaving together the visual and performing arts. For

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Monica Bonvicini, All Day Night Smoke, 2018. Photo: Iris Ranzinger. Courtesy: the artist and Galleria Raffaella Cortese, König Galerie, Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Mitchell-Innes & Nash. © Monica Bonvicini and VG-Bild Kunst.

example, the Tate Modern, the Barbican Centre, and the Southbank Centre in London, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Park Avenue Armory in New York, not to mention the Manchester International Festival,” Ricciardi said in an interview.

But this international prism doesn’t exclude OGR’s local roots in Turin and the surrounding region, where numerous private foundations, galleries, public museums (despite their limited financial means), and spaces for artist residences and festivals combine to form a robust network dedicated to art. For while OGR is interested in art production across the world, it wants to tailor its programs to reflect the excellence of art in Turin as well, and to stimulate and facilitate exchanges and transfers of knowledge between the local and the global.

To these ends, Ricciardi has formed connections with prestigious Turin museums: the Museo Egizio, specializing in Egyptian antiquities; the Palazzo Madama’s Museum of Ancient Art; the GAM museum of modern and contemporary art; the Museo d’Arte Orientale; and the Castello di Rivoli, with its noteworthy Museum of Contemporary Art, which opened in 1984.

With these partnerships in place, Ricciardi has enlarged the sense of what is possible for art in the city. For example, his alliance with the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (founded in Turin in 1995), which focuses on young Italian and international artists, suitably complements OGR’s mission. The two organisations provide joint spaces for an exhibition housed at both venues, supported by the city museums.

The exhibition, “Like a Moth to the Flame” – curated by the brilliant and innovative team of the artist Liam Gillick, the editor-in-chief of ArtReview, Mark Rappolt, and the executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College in New York State, Tom Eccles –

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brought together fifty-four artists to present Turin through objects collected by the city’s museums and residents. Organized immediately after OGR’s inaugural festivities, this first exhibition revealed not only the institution’s attentive gaze on Turin itself, but also the high standards of its programming.

In its two-year existence, OGR has shown the work of Tino Sehgal; Susan Hiller; the Iranian trio of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian; Mike Nelson; and Ari Benjamin Meyers. More recently, it has hosted the Biennale of Image and Movement through its partnership with the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva, while the work of Pablo Bronstein is on show until November 24, 2019.

It is a busy slate, admits Ricciardi, but one that places OGR squarely within the history of contemporary art in Turin: Marisa and Mario Merz lived and worked in the city; arte povera was born there in 1967 (Giuseppe Penone still has his workshop in Turin); Artissima, Italy’s most important contemporary art fair, takes place in the city every November; and the Merz, Pistoletto, and Sandretto Re Rebaudengo foundations call Turin home. “Our exhibitions are complex, and, in a way, we ask a lot of our visitors, who are mostly Turin residents,” said Ricciardi. “But I love the idea that they are surprised by the works and by their use of the exhibition space, and that OGR, separate from its programming, constitutes a place of exchange, of meeting, and of peace.”

OGR, Corso Castelfidardo, 22, 10138 Turin. Among OGR’s numerous autumn events are exhibitions by Monica Bonvicini (October 31, 2019 – February 2, 2020) and Mauro Restiffe (October 30, 2019 – January 5, 2020), both curated by Nicola Ricciardi.

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Undertones

Edi th Dek ynd t ’s work is founded on the fundamental ambiguity of living. Her recent exhibitions, in Paris and Hamburg, embrace the ambiences and unobjectifi able experience of affects.

FLORENCE MEYSSONNIER: Your work does not show an explicitly claimed ecological positioning, but it has nevertheless been imbued with this dimension since its inception. This dimension is above all that of an “attachment” to the living, to the form of life that is part of an atmospheric ontology: an ambiguity that goes beyond the contours of form or interpretation. In this sense, your work seems to be truly steeped in the atmosphere of contexts of invitation, and more particularly in the resources that others offer you. Let’s go back to your recent projects in order to consider the modus operandi underlying your practice, which is fundamentally an ethos – not an ethos or principle being applied “to” something, but rather a disposition, both a way of being and of living “with,” which requalifies our value mechanisms in relationships that are always complex and uncertain.

EDITH DEKYNDT: My pieces are always about a state, a tone, or an atmosphere. As such, the value distinction between what “works” and what doesn’t remains rather vague. Art, like any other socially constituted sphere, generates forms of immunity in order to exist, but its envelopes are porous. When the exhibition at the VNH Gallery in Paris was put in place, I was absorbed by my reading about American civilization, which has always fascinated me: this land of conquest, invested with romantic and spiritual aspirations, as well as the more utilitarian ones of the marketplace. The stories of the pioneers bear witness to a construction of the self in these complex relationships. Like a song you can’t get out of your head, there are certain things that just inhabit you. The lasso had been there for years, like this American civilization, its genesis, its relationship to the environment, its conflictual nature, made up of a movement of domination and emancipation. The lasso takes charge of all this complexity. Then came the moment when I was invited to Paris. It triggered this return to American soil. My readings were not enough. I felt the need to go there, to be permeated with this atmosphere that combines human habits and customs with a plant and animal ecosystem. I stayed at a ranch. Back in Paris, the lasso piece became the central work of the exhibition. It quickly became tinged with the warm tones – both violent and sensual – of this relationship.

In contact with the city of Hamburg, my exhibition for the Kunsthaus immediately became tinted white, black and blue. These three colors are the dominant tones of romanticism and of the icy landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich, one of whose major pieces, Das Eismeer [1823–1824], is displayed in the city. But they are also related to the obvious presence of water and of the cold, and to other less obvious, more repressed, associations. I discovered the Billstraße district, near the port, where a lot of objects that Europe no longer wants are stored. They are waiting to be shipped, especially to the African continent, from which the majority of the people who work in the district also come. This area is almost entirely ignored by the rest of the city, which has a particularly prosperous history, linked to its central position in European economic activity. I decided to bring this universe back into the Kunsthaus, which is part of a very different world.

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Edith Dekyndt, The Lariat, installation view, VNH Gallery, Paris, 2019. Photo: Diane Arques / ADAGP. Courtesy: the artist and VNH Gallery.

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Edith Dekyndt, The Lariat, 2019; fabric on canvas, sound system and action; “Edith Dekyndt: The Lariat,” installation view, VNH Gallery, Paris, 2019. Photo: Diane Arques / ADAGP. Courtesy: the artist and VNH Gallery.

These entanglements seem particularly palpable at VNH or the Kunsthaus. The elements are intertwined with each other.

The exhibition is also a landscape that somatizes interplays of affects. In Paris and Hamburg, you worked with salvaged objects (window displays, carpets, leather skins, fridges, etc.) that have been impacted by the energy of a lasso or by the movements of a parkour collective, but which have also been modified with many other alterations due to interleaving, pressure, decomposition.

Again, in these exhibitions, the pieces take “charge” of the circulations that exceed the limits of their “locality.”

Any gesture, object, or material indeed takes charge of the movements of affects. The exhibitions are production sites among others; they take care of their dynamics and highlight an intensity in existing.

They are also eminently atmospheric, at once the content and the forms of lived experience. Shop-window displays or jars are of this order: they preserve and transport. Carpets are zones of transient occupation. It is primarily through the properties of objects, materials or gestures that something transits and occurs. My recent projects are almost entirely made from secondhand objects or materials. The idea of resources takes on all its meaning for me in this form of appropriation restoring a value that is beyond our assignations of mere usage. Appropriation does not necessarily lead for me to a relationship of domination, but requires much more letting go so that something may occur.

It seems to me that everything is related to the reflexive aspect of these dynamics. In this both fragile and confident dimension of the “self” – especially in the sense that the philosopher Paul Ricoeur gives to this term – or the autonomy of a “do it yourself”

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ethos, to which you seem committed, the repetition of a gesture (your own in your various series, that of marathon dancers, or practitioners of the lasso or parkour, to name just a few) meets the desire to exist by incorporating a context that exceeds all intentions. They all express a variety of forms of persisting in “their” being, like zones that both traverse and are traversed.

The repeated gesture, that is more present in your work in recent years, seems to affirm the “performative” dimension as that of the persistence of being, which can generate situations that go beyond any mere scenario.

Again, I do not feel comfortable with terminologies and categories.

The performance of sweepers at the Wiels [art center in Belgium] or the Venice Biennale, of the women cleaning the statue of King Albert I in Nieuwpoort, do not focus a moment of intention and attention in the public sphere. It has value only for itself, in this “self,” this desire to be. Their properties impact and incorporate the environment, they fit in to it according to their modalities. It is very important to me that the people who take part in my work concentrate on the gesture, that they disregard the injunction of “results,” as I do myself. This concentrated gesture gives them a condition that distinguishes them and binds them to their environment as well as to us. Such actors evolve in this ambiguity of being “with” and “outside” of us. They are always “relative,” they take charge of their environment by coming into contact with it and are supported by it in return. All of them waver in a distant intimacy, which leaves us with the strange impression that they emerge out of depths of which we, too, are a part. The boundaries fade into an atmosphere in which the background and the form merge into a diffuse locality.

Nothing ultimately exists outside of this ambiguity.

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* Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin, Paris

Mélanie Matranga, You, 2016 © Mélanie Matranga © Collection Lafayette Anticipations

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Œuvres de la collection Lafayette Anticipations * 11 octobre 2019 – 16 février 2020

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Edith Dekyndt, Waxahachie, 2018; video, skin and display case; 144 x 160 x 90 cm; Edith Dekyndt: The Lariat, installation view, VNH Gallery, Paris, 2019.

Photo: Diane Arques / ADAGP. Courtesy: the artist and VNH Gallery.

I also believe that this atmospheric dimension raises the complexity of the value that again depends on how one may “charge” something, or “take charge” of it. In this, your work is fundamentally alive because it is animated by the conviction that every object, every element, is always much more than itself, embroiled in the complexity of the living that escapes articulation or representation. If you are accustomed to saying that your production is not that of an imagination, it is because, in my opinion, it allows this imagination of the living itself to act, and has the capacity to place us in an unpredictable, always non-optimal fabulation, which is essentially ambiguous and ethereal.

There is indeed no plan, no intention, just as there is no imagination in my work. It is only these “charges,” alterations in reiterations, that circulate, which, rather than destructions, further activate the movement of an eternal birth. Both the object and the environment exist only in the properties that incorporate and distinguish them, in order to maintain them in that impermanent state. These objects, considered as unworkable, for some devalued, become for others a source of possibility. Their value thus becomes equivocal, relative to contexts and perspectives. Resituated back in the heart of the exhibition, they detach the self from this authoritarian declaration of ownership and corollary value systems. They engage us in the optimality of value by way of its opposite, namely the precariousness or emptiness of the puzzle that allows one to activate a completely different – non-distinctive, nonstatutory – relationship to the self.

And “non-statuary,” we could say. The piece made for Nieuwpoort concerning a statue is in this sense very telling. It transforms this equestrian statue, erected in memory of King Albert I, into the object of attention for a woman who stands at his level by means of a ramp and who, for hours, lightly touches the horse’s nose with a rag. We do not know if she is cleaning him or caring for

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him. And suddenly, on this windy coast, in this historical context, all certainties waver in favor of new states. The work still acts here as a revelation. In this “moment,” reality breaks out in the interweaving of perspectives.

Indeed, this piece establishes a moment of intimacy, and places us at the heart of what is given and taken in this interdependence of life.

This monument of dominant masculinity, which remains of the order of the symbol or symptom of warlike memory, is here transformed into the gesture of a woman with regard to the animal, in the event that it produces. It makes sense in this conflict-ridden region, where women have taken on the responsibility of living. In this immense, windy, highly charged landscape, a link with the living seems to be established. The world does not become the same; it is fragile. New perspectives burst through. They upset the given order, moving the center of gravity of the monument towards the relation.

In this sense, we again see here, as in the rest of your work, that to appropriate is to give autonomy: granting existence to this “self” that needs to “pass through” something in order to exist more or differently.

This modality of passage is indeed essential in my approach. That of the gesture that cleans, erases, transmits, transforms, or the action of a material that leads or carries. It is by establishing zones of contact that what I would qualify as less apparition than appearance is born.

By witnessing it, existences acquire a legitimacy that goes beyond our perspectives. This is perhaps what we might call an ecological condition: to exist in this experience of exile of oneself.

“The White, The Black, The Blue”, Konrad Fischer Galerie, Düsseldorf, until Oct 19. “They Shoot Horses”, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hambourg, until June 7 2020. “Winter Drums 06B”, in «Luogo e segni», Punta della dogana - Pinault collection, Venezia, until Dec 15.

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© Laure Prouvost – Parle Ment Branches (2), 2017. Branches, Plâtre, Peinture, 160 x 80 cm Courtesy de l’artiste et Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris / Bruxelles. Crédit photo: Bertrand Huet / tutti image.

100, bis rue d’Assas 75006 Paris www.zadkine.paris.fr #reveurdelaforet

DU 27 SEPTEMBRE 2019 AU 23 FÉVRIER 2020 Arp, Bard, Berdaguer & Péjus, Berrada, Brauner, Couturier, Ernst, Gadon-Gonzalez, Giacometti, Hervé, Jospin, Karp, Michel, Peñafiel Loaiza, Penone, Pérez, Picasso, Prouvost, Richier, Séraphine de Senlis…

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Giuseppe Penone, Matrice di linfa, 2008 (detail); fir wood, vegetal resin, terracotta, leather, metal; 131 x 4500 x 212 cm.

Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano. Courtesy: Archivio Penone and Marian Goodman Gallery.

Giuseppe Penone: “Absence Unlocks the Imagination” For this year’s FIAC contemporary art fair, the Palais d’Iéna in Paris is presenting a monumental work by Giuseppe Penone: a cross section of a hollowed-out tree, revealing, in the manner of a mold or casting, how it looked at a younger age. This original idea for a sculpture brings the viewer into a physical, interior space. We interview the artist in the Marian Goodman Gallery in Paris.

L’OFFICIEL ART: You are exhibiting three works in the Palais d’Iéna: the 45m-long Sap Matrix and two new pieces. How did you choose these works to show?

GIUSEPPE PENONE: The tree rings show that the excavated tree would be eighty years old, the same age as the Palais d’Iéna. This space, conceived of by Auguste Perret, perfectly matches the work, which needs fifty-odd meters to be shown.

It has already been shown in Paris and in Belgium, then taken down and stored. I was curious to see it again, because its size makes it difficult to install. Inside the tree, the inner surface is filled with resin and terra-cotta, the latter acting to prevent any leakage of the resin. The work has several elements; it’s rather complex. The two related works are indeed new, but they are very simple. The root idea is that when we think, a certain logic takes hold, and this thinking logic, which is also that behind

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expression, can be translated into geometric forms, which, like crystals, become something very logical – entities that we associate with our existence, our body, our being. These crystal forms are present in nature, in rocks. I could say that this idea of our logic, of the geometry of our thinking, is inherent in matter. So I thought of a bronze branch that supports leaves placed on the plaster molding of a face and then welded together. The brain is symbolized by a rock.

Do you think of mineral life, which is so deeply rooted in nature, and the notion of equilibrium as being in tandem?

Without explicitly aiming for it, I have tried to create a very linear, simple work: a branch in bronze to create a certain distance, like that of a projection. The branch propels the idea of development and the associations present in the work. But the initial motivation is thinking about the logic and intelligence already present in matter.

I’m a sculptor, I always work with matter, materials: a good piece of art is a work imbued with vitality from which flows its energy, and that is full of concepts, a worldview. Matter has a life, and the paradox comes from the fact that science constantly expands the idea of life from the human to animals, and to the vegetal and the mineral: we’re trying to understand, to see the cosmos as a living organism. These ideas go beyond the stigmatization of inanimate matter. All of this is my passion. I create a dialogic work, one with a very simple form, maybe, but one that produces questions.

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Simulation of the exhibition at the Palais d’Iéna, Paris, October 2019. Giuseppe Penone, Matrice di linfa, 2008 (detail); fir wood, vegetal resin, terracotta, leather, metal; 131 x 4500 x 212 cm. Photo: EESC Benoît Fougeirol. Courtesy: Archivio Penone and Marian Goodman Gallery. © Palais d’Iéna, architect Auguste Perret, UFSE, SAIF.

Sap Matrix is in the long, hypostyle hall of the Palais d’Iéna, a space that can prove to be complicated for presenting sculpture, but that allows the visitor to walk around your piece.

This room has a simplicity in its elements, and it has something that you hardly see nowadays in architecture: a rigorous and very interesting symmetry in the windows, the columns, and the three church-like naves – the central one and two running parallel, all with the same dimensions. This creates an extraordinary space. When they asked me to use this hall, I immediately thought of this piece.

I imagined that it would find a good home in the space, and that a rhythm would be created with the columns that would echo the tree’s interior rhythm. Many elements are thrust into relation, while the space is in some way disturbed by this slightly illogical intrusion of the natural element at its center, and that introduces disorder into this highly regular space.

How do you place this work in your practice? It’s such a strong and captivating piece, which asks the viewer to develop a close relationship to it.

The sources of intuition connected to my work are always similar. In this case, they are associated with trees. I find my inspiration inside the wood: once I’ve discovered the tree rings, I excavate a tree at a particular age. These sculptures build on the idea of positive and negative, of casting and of modeling.

For example, in traditional sculpture, when the artist gives a form to clay with his hands, these gestures are the casting of the work – they give form to the work, they describe it. The growth of a tree, ring after ring, becomes the casting of the tree

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contained within. The idea is to present the casting of the tree at a certain age, as though it were liberated from its carapace, making it present in space. This also suggests an absence.

Absence is brought out as well by the visitor’s feelings, which give a presence to the real tree...

Just as the visitor becomes absence when leaving the hall.

Absence unlocks the imagination, not like presence, which sometimes stands in the way; when we don’t see something, our thinking is stimulated. Other pieces could be said to have an indirect connection to this exhibition – for example, a series of works from 1978 on the breath as the negative of the human body, respiration as a sculptural volume. The idea is that the volume of the breath diffuses into space a quality of air that doesn’t have the same character as the air around it. This volume – produced by all living beings, a characteristic of us that stays with us throughout our entire lives – is already a sculptural form. This thinking led me to conceive of a work where the positive of the breath can be seen.

This piece is all in clay, because we also breathe in the earth, and its form is like a big vase in which you can partially see the human body. There, too, absence – that of the human body – meets a presence – that of the vase that becomes something like an inflated belly. There is the idea of life and of absence in this work on the breath. It could be said to have a formal connection to the branches and to the absence of the tree’s form.

Giuseppe Penone’s Matrice di Linfa (Sap Matrix) is at the Palais d’Iéna, home of the Conseil économique, social, et environnemental, in association with the Marian Goodman Gallery, on October 15–27, 2019.

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30 Nov. 2019 - 3 MAI 2020 Giovanni Anselmo, Entrare nell’opera, 1971, tirage noir et blanc sur toile. Coll. Fundação de Serralves Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto, Portugal.

Acquisition 1999 © Giovanni Anselmo.

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The New Face of Musée d’art moderne

Hans Hartung, Untitled, 1935; watercolor on paper; 47 x 61.3 cm; Fondation Hartung-Bergman, Antibes.

Photo: Fondation Hartung-Bergman. © ADAGP, Paris, 2019.

Among the highlights of the modern and contemporary art in the capital, the MAM has chosen, after a year of works, to end 2019 with a new look that makes visiting it even more enjoyable. As an inaugural gesture for this new stage, a retrospective by Hans Hartung: a success not to be missed.

“As for me, I want to stay free. In mind, thought, and action.

Not to let myself shut in, by others or myself. It is this stubborn permanence that, throughout my life, has allowed me to continue, to pursue my path. Not to betray myself or my ideas...” This manifesto could be expressed by everyone, so striking is its relevance and its anchoring in the truest aspects of existence.

Applied to the ar tistic task , it takes on an even stronger dimension, as it questions the identity, place and role of the creator. A major artist of the twentieth century and a precursor

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of abstraction, the German artist Hans Hartung (1904-1989) lived through the disturbances of the century with the fierce will to explore the twists and turns of his discipline, as evidenced by the multiplicity of mediums exhibited and the rich archival apparatus. No retrospective had been devoted to him in France since 1969. This is therefore a key opportunity to observe some 300 works, from French and international, public and private collections. This is especially the case as the museum’s jewel has been given a facelift, with the renovation of its lobby. This space is thus able to be (re) -discovered through a new display of the collections: a century of art history featuring major works. This considerable work has been accomplished under the auspices of director Fabrice Hergott, who has thus raised the stakes of Paris’s museums for a wide range of audiences.

“Hans Hartung, la fabrique du geste”, October 11, 2019-March 1st, 2020, Musée d’art moderne, Paris.

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Asia Now, or When the Asian Scene Arrives in Paris

Pixy Liao, Things We Talk About, 2013. Courtesy: the artist.

One of the FIAC’s most popular events, Asia Now, judging by the four previous editions, is today a benchmark in showcasing the Asian art scene. This year its rich and diversified programming again promises a very good vintage.

The first Parisian art fair entirely focused on the Asian art scene, Asia Now begins its fifth edition this season under the auspices of a successful vision. This vision was built and carried into the heart of the capital by Alexandra Fain, the event’s founder. A demanding selection of galleries and an ambitious and amplified program of satellite events has facilitated the arrival of newcomers. The fair is thus hosting, for the first time, Chambers Fine Art (Beijing, New York), Galleria Continua (San Gimignano, Beijing, Les Moulins, Habana), Over the Influence (Hong Kong, Los Angeles), Star

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Gallery (Beijing), M97 Gallery (Shanghai), Gallery 55 (Shanghai).

With a total of around fifty galleries, Asia Now is an art fair on a human scale, but is nonetheless a unique opportunity to observe a broad panorama of contemporary Asian creation, with works by more than 250 artists from China, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Korea and Japan. In addition, the fair invites a curator who is entrusted with the development of a dedicated exhibition, a program of performances and conversations; as well as a personal selection of emerging galleries. The 2019 edition welcomes Xiaorui Zhu-Nowell, Assistant Curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, who chose not to adopt the regional angle but rather to explore a thematic approach, whose title is IRL (In Real Life). It will shine a spotlight on artists born in the digital age...

Asia Now, October 16-20, Paris.

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Musée Zadkine or the Call of the Forest

Jean Dubuffet, Chaussée boiseuse, 1959, 46 x 55 cm. © ADAGP, 2019 Paris, musée d’Art moderne de Paris © Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris/Roger-Viollet.

Among the least-known museums in Paris, the Musée Zadkine is nevertheless one of the most charming cultural locations in the city, with a series of programs of contemporary ar t developed in concer t with the legacy of Ossip Zadkine, who lived and worked in the house and its workshop from 1928 to his death in 1967. This autumn and winter, the visitor is welcomed to take a walk in the forest...

“Sculptors of my generation [...] and myself as well can be considered to be the sustaining forces of the ancient tradition of those stonemasons and wood carvers who having left the forest

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sang freely their dreams of fantastical birds and of enormous tree trunks” — this quotation from Ossip Zadkine was chosen by the Musée Zadkine as the launching point of their superb exhibition gathering a bevy of artists from Guillaume Apollinaire to Germaine Richier, Eva Jospin, Ariane Michel, and even Paul Gauguin. A hundred works of all media from forty-odd artists bring to life our connection to the forest. A place of myth, fear, rebirth, and fantasy, the forest is divided into three parts: the edge of the forest, its birth, and the sacred, or sleeping, woods. Under Noëlle Chabert’s careful but energetic and inspired direction, the Musée Zadkine invites guests to celebrate the forest.

“Le Rêveur de la forêt” (“The Forest Dreamer,”) Musée Zadkine until February 23, 2020.

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Montresso Foundation: Crosswise Glances

Montresso Art Foundation, Marrakesh. Photo: Cyril Boixel.

Begun in Morocco in 2009, the Montresso Foundation has the goal of sustaining art and expanding diversity in artistic research.

An ar tist residence begun from 2009, an ex t r a m u r a l ev e n t s p r o g r a m i n i t i a t e d i n 20 11, and an ar t space inaugurate d in 2016 constitute one of the most interesting recent developments in Marrakech. “There are Treasures Everywhere” shows the work of Roxane Daumas, Tania Mouraud, MayaInes Touam, and Fatiha Zemmouri.

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These are four female artists whose inner voices give rise to questions that needle our minds. Roxane Daumas creates a grammar of bodies describing the places of our lives. Tania Mouraud questions the aesthetic limits of art via our use of language. Maya-Ines Touram presents photographs within the continuity of her exploration of stilllife images inspired by the Dutch aesthetic of the 17th century. Not sculpture, nor drawing, nor painting, the works of Fatiha Zemmouri include all these genres at the same time. Here, she meditates upon the way that a work comes into being. Each has a specific language, and yet the four together form a harmonious whole.

“There are Treasures Everywhere,” Montresso Foundation, Marrakech, until December 3, 2019.

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Art Düsseldorf: 3rd Edition!

Left to right: Erwin Wurm, Untitled (Big L), 2017. Photo: Studio Wurm. Tony Cragg, IT IS, ISN’T, 2010. © Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art.

After two successful editions, Art Düsseldorf, under the direction of Walter Gehlen, has announced a promising Act III, with nearly 90 participating galleries.

In the array of international fairs devoted to contemporary art, it is difficult for a new entity to find its place, tone and audience.

And yet, with some 90 galleries (both German and international) which meet different criteria (whether well-established or newly emerging), Art Düsseldorf 2019 has been able to win over the public. The exhibition venue—the large Areal Böhler steelworks— lend their high ceilings and spaces bathed in light to the instal-

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lation of monumental works. Founded in 2017 by Walter Gehlen and Andreas Lohaus, the fair has had more than 40,000 visitors over its first two editions. Galleries of modern and contemporary art from Germany, Benelux, and more broadly internationally, present a program of artists apt to capture the interest of collectors, for which the city of Düsseldorf and its history—intimately linked to the artistic scene (artists, movements, galleries and institutions)— constitutes an ideal site. To consolidate its position, Art Düsseldorf has forged links with local institutions in order to consolidate its stature, which seems destined to grow.

Art Düsseldorf, Areal Böhler, November 15-17.

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Art at Furla Since its inception in 2008, the Fondazione Furla has played a pioneering role among the organizations founded by Italian designer labels to support contemporary art.

Giovanna Furlanetto is the president of the leather-goods maker, founded in 1927 in Bologna, but with locations in Milan and near Florence. Although not an art collector herself, Furlanetto continues to prove her passion for the public display of art through a variety of innovative initiatives.

In 2008, the Italian Order of Merit for Labor (Ordine al Merito del Lavoro) was awarded to Giovanna Furlanetto, not just for her family’s work as craftsmen over generations, but also for her efforts as a patron of contemporary art. In 2000, Furlanetto launched a rigorous program of patronage for the visual arts through the Furla Art Award (Premio Furla per l’Arte). Until 2015, this important prize was awarded by the curator Chiara Bertola in consultation with leading artists, such as Michelangelo Pistoletto, Kiki Smith, Mona Hatoum, Marina Abramovic, Christian Boltanski, and Jimmie Durham.

For more than ten years, the prize shone a light on the young Italian artists for whom it was created, earning them the attention of Italian and international museums. In 2016, the decision was made to suspend the prize in order to update the patronage program, streamlining and expanding the forms of support through a series of annual exhibitions intended to be as inclusive as possible. This new vision was facilitated in part by the passing of a law in 2016 meant to encourage partnerships between the public and private sectors – a necessity in Italy, where culture (and art in particular) is not strongly supported by the government, and where the private sector plays an essential role.

In fact, luxury brands and leading art collectors have been a part of this dynamic since the early 1990s, mitigating the absence of contemporary art museums by acting from time to time as a city’s primary capital investors for art. Take Turin, for example, the birthplace of the arte povera movement, where the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Merz, Pistoletto, and Agnelli foundations, the Castello di Rivoli museum, and the Artissima art fair have transformed the city, making it a destination for Italians and international visitors alike. Since 1993, Milan’s Fondazione Prada has been the leader among fashion houses in this regard. For the past four years, the foundation has been housed in a vast complex to the south of Milan, designed by Rem Koolhaas and expanded in spring 2018 with a concrete tower housing 2,000 sq m of additional space. With this bold vision, the complex confirms the city’s commitment to art.

In the north of the city, the Fondazione Pirelli takes advantage of the expansive Hangar Bicocca to house its excellent programs. As for the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, under the leadership of Beatrice Trussardi it has shouldered the double task of presenting contemporary art to the public, and renovating and highlighting special places in Milan. These include Palazzo Litta or the much-visited Piazza del Duomo with the adjacent Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II shopping arcade, which featured the installation of Elmgreen and Dragset’s Short Cut (2003), a Fiat Uno and a caravan emerging from underground.

The Fondazione Furla’s efforts have evolved quickly yet organically.

Bruna Roccasalva – who in 2009 co-founded Peep-Hole, a site-specific art space unique in Italy – was brought on board in 2016 to take over the foundation’s artistic direction. “When we decided to suspend activity at Peep-Hole, Giovanna Furlanetto asked me to collaborate with the foundation,” Roccasalva says. “Her project of forming partnerships with Milanese museums and institutions to present contemporary art immediately interested me.” In autumn 2016, the foundation collaborated with the Museo del Novecento to present an art collection that, thanks to the efforts and loans of private collectors and philanthropists, boasted some four-hundred works from the 20th century.

The first art programs were debuted the following year: a series of

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Christian Marclay, concert performed at Museo del Novecento, Sala Fontana, Milan, 2017. Photo: Masiar Pasquali. Courtesy: Fondazione Furla.

Paulina Olowska, Slavic Goddesses and the Ushers, 2018; performance, Museo del Novecento, Milan. Photo: Masiar Pasquali.

Courtesy: Foksal Gallery Foundation, Metro Pictures and Fondazione Furla.

artist presentations, roundtables, seminars, workshops, concerts, and guided visits. Although it was founded to support Italian artists, the foundation has now changed direction to promote international art of great relevance, in keeping with its ambition to make contemporary art more widely available in Italy. “Time After Time, Space After Space,” the inaugural program, gathered a wonderful group of international artists – Alexandra Bachzetsis, Simone Forti, Adelita Husni-Bey, Christian Marclay, and Paulina Olowska – in a series of performances. “We want to showcase all artists, regardless of their nationality, but especially ones who haven’t yet been shown in Italy, in rich and sophisticated projects,” Roccasalva says. Through the financing of loans, transportation, and insurance that the Museo del Novecento’s limited budget would not have been able to sustain, the foundation’s collaboration was both a must-see for visitors and an act of support for public institutions.

In autumn 2018, a partnership with Triennale Milano welcomed the Korean artist Haegue Yang in the second installment of the new programming. “Haegue Yang: Tightrope Walking and its Wordless Shadow,” her first solo show in Italy, was accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue of close to five-hundred pages. “I’m lucky to share a vision with Giovanna Furlanetto,” Roccasalva says. “She has given me her full confidence to schedule programs as I see fit, and yet she is also extremely involved and supportive. She believes that art can change things, that it’s a mirror held up to society. To show international artists on Italian soil is for her a way of participating in the country’s culture.”

Another Milanese institution has been selected to host the solo show of a famous international artist for next spring. fondazionefurla.org

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David Wojnarowicz

Left to right: David Wojnarowicz, 1984. Photo: Marion Scemama.

David Wojnarowicz, Pteradactyl, 1983; mural painting, Hudson River Pier. Photo: Marion Scemama.

After a childhood marred by family and societal violence, the American artist David Wojnarowicz went on to develop a unique vision across many media. A victim of the AIDS epidemic, he died in New York City in 1992 at the age of thirty-seven. Wojnarowicz left an incredible body of photographic work, including previously un-seen photographs, to his friend and collaborator Marion Scemama, which are on show this fall at the New Galerie in Paris. Scemama is also presenting her own wo r ks , p h o t o g r a p h s a n d videos from the 1980s, taking inspiration from and documenting Wojnarowicz’s art and life, as well as the Lower East Side scene. Mathieu Cénac, co-founder of the publishing house Jean Boîte Éditions and co-curator of the exhibition, speaks to us about the artist.

L’OFFICIEL ART: David Wojnarowicz was the subject of a traveling exhibition, “History Keeps Me Awake at Night,” presented first at the Whitney Museum in New York in 2018, then at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid earlier in 2019, and at Mudam Luxembourg from this October.

Why did the New Galerie want to exhibit Wojnarowicz’s photography specifically?

What impact can it make on art in Paris?

MATH IE U CÉNAC: There were never any plans to show “History Keeps Me Awake at Night” in Paris. But Wojnarowicz’s intellectual friendships, romantic relationships, and the other friendships that he developed in France defined his short career. He came to Paris in 1978 and became the lover of

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Jean-Pierre Delage, a hairdresser who later modeled for the artist’s first series of photographs – which became symbolic – featuring a scenario of Arthur Rimbaud in New York. In this same period, he used the figure of Jean Genet in many of his works.

Wojnarowicz identified with these two poets/ artists/homosexuals/marginalized figures/ vagabonds outside the law. The exhibition at the New Galerie is formed around the personal collection of the photographer and cinematographer Marion Scemama, and around the photographs that she developed with and for Wojnarowicz. Without having any desire to be retrospective, the exhibition allows visitors to explore more than ten years [1978-1989] of the artist’s photographic production, and to follow the course of an artistic friendship that led Wojnarowicz to take his last long trip with Scemama in 1991.

Born in 1954 in New Jersey, Wojnarowicz died of AIDS in 1992. It was a short life in which he produced drawings, paintings, music, written texts, and in which he was an activist, especially against the inaction of the government in the face of the AIDS epidemic. Keith Haring, Zoe Leonard, Kiki Smith, Nan Goldin, and others were part of his inner circle, or came into contact with him. Who are Wojnarowicz’s artistic heirs?

Artists killed by AIDS are united by the fact that they died too young and they were often imprisoned in a single-minded combat against the illness and the inaction of the governments of the time. But the rage that Wojnarowicz developed very early in his expression of the coming and going of his desires was due just as much to the total absence of homosexual role models in his childhood. Today, the fight for the emergence of non-caricatured, nonstigmatized LGBTQI+ public figures is far from over, and the HIV crisis of the 1980s and 1990s certainly curbed the breakthrough in gaining recognition for marginalized people. But beyond the social status of LGBTQI+ peoples,

Wojnarowicz is a figure for the marginalized and for free spirits reacting against the “preinvented world” – a phrase that he coined and that remains at the very center of his work. To him, this concept combines all social rules that humans have put in place: money, religion, guns, red lights, road signs – all the things that separate us from our free will. The untitled photographs from the “Ant Series” that the New Galerie exhibits illustrate clearly this concept: ants are the only insects that “keep pets, use tools, make war and capture slaves.”

Who are the points of reference for Wojnarowicz in terms of art, and how did this self-taught artist develop his language?

Wojnarowicz produced written texts, paintings, photographs, drawings, graffiti, music, installations, videos – a great variety of media and visual languages. But if we pay attention to the repetitions in his work, it’s easy to identify not only animals, but also friends, landscapes, lovers, and recurrent motifs that first he photographed. Photography, then, is a central practice and the point of departure for his language. “To me,” says Wojnarowicz, “photographs are like words and I generally will place many photographs together or print them one inside the other in order to construct a freefloating sentence that speaks about the world I witness. History is made and preserved by and for particular classes of people. A camera in some hands can preserve an alternate history.”

He embodies in his life and work the figure of the outsider in 1980s New York, a city that was at once full of a hyperactive creativity and only a handful of years past being on the brink of bankruptcy. How does the city feature in his work?

In his writing, Wojnarowicz proves to be one of the most important and revealing chroniclers of his generation. His style transports the reader into the streets and bars of New York City, evoking a life of wandering between squats, bars, and piers, but also speaking of

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Paris Asian 16–20 October 2019 Art Fair 9 avenue Hoche, Paris 8e Collectors Preview: October 15 A2Z Art Gallery ART’LOFT, Lee-Bauwens Gallery ART SEASONS Aspan Gallery Beijing Commune Chambers Fine Art CHOI&LAGER Gallery COHJU contemporary art DANYSZ gallery ESH Gallery Galerie Artvera’s Galerie Catherine Putman Galerie LJ Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire Galerie Maria Lund Galerie OVO Galerie Quynh Galleri Feldt Galleria Continua Gallery 55 Gallery SoSo Ginkgo Space HdM Gallery La Patinoire Royale – Galerie Valérie Bach LEE & BAE M97 Gallery Mine Project Gallery New Galerie Over The Influence Pierre-Yves Caër Gallery

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© Pixy Liao, Things We Talk About, 2013. Courtesy the artist and Chambers Fine Art

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the expansive deserts of the American West.

He writes just as movingly in his narratives about his encounters with men as about fleeting moments in which his anguish is on full display. Formally, his photographs present places, bodies, and feelings from a New York that gentrification has entirely destroyed. The New York of the 1980s can be symbolized in the terms of the agreement that Wojnarowicz brokered with the owners of the building where he squatted in the former loft of his mentor and lover Peter Hujar: he could stay on for as long as he had the disease, but as soon as a treatment were found, he would have to leave. He died three years later.

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David Wojnarowicz, 1984.

Photo: Marion Scemama.

Sex, spirituality, love, and notions of absence and loss define his work. Borders between the personal and the collective are effectively abrogated. “To make the private into something public is an action that has terrific ramifications in the pre-invented world,” Wojnarowicz wrote.

He also wrote, “Everything was sexualized.

Any turn that I made on a street corner was a possibility of eroticism. Everything was fused with, infused with eroticism. And it was wonderful because everything felt free in that movement.” Sexuality is central to his life; it was at the heart of his writing.

Making clear the beauty of his sexuality was for him a way of making visible and public an entire community that America preferred to keep hidden – or, worse, to deny entirely.

His strongest images and rage-filled slogans immediately became a part of history, and it is time to also honor the eroticism, the poetry, and the beauty present in his work.

“This Killing Machine Called America,” the title of the exhibition at the New Galerie, resonates with contemporary history, if we think about anti-black violence or the dispossession of Native Americans from their land.

In 1985, Louie Welch, a former mayor of Houston who was still active in politics, suggested solving the HIV problem by “shooting the queers.” This allows us to put into perspective the violent title of the show, a phrase taken from one of Wojnarowicz’s texts. “I wake up every morning in this killing machine called America” was a daily feeling for communities decimated by AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s, but it resonates more broadly with all those who have been and will be excluded, killed, or sacrificed by the American “system” – African-Americans, Native Americans, Japanese-Americans, Hispanics, the poor, the marginal, those addicted to drugs, prostitutes, and former and current slaves. Wojnarowicz questions America’s arrogant proclamations of being a land of the free – one that is built upon the oppression and the sacrificing of entire categories of people.

“This Killing Machine Called America,” New Galerie, Paris, October 11-December 14.

“David Wojnarowicz”, MUDAM, Luxembourg, October 26, 2019-February 9, 2020.

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greengrassi, London

Sans titre (2016), Paris

Bureau, New York

Gregor Staiger, Zurich

Shivers Only, Paris

Carlos /Ishikawa, London

Hagiwara Projects, Tokyo

Southard Reid, London

Capsule, Shanghai

Kayokoyuki, Tokyo

Sultana, Paris

Chapter NY, New York

Koppe Astner, Glasgow

Tanya Leighton, Berlin

Crèvecoeur, Paris

KOW, Berlin

Temnikova & Kasela, Tallinn

Croy Nielsen, Vienna

La Plage, Paris

The Performance Agency, Berlin

Deborah Schamoni, Munich

Lars Friedrich, Berlin

Tirana Art Center, Tirana

Emalin, London

MadeIn, Shanghai

Union Pacific, London

Ermes – Ermes, Vienna

Max Mayer, Dusseldorf

VEDA, Florence

Essex Street, New York

Misako & Rosen, Tokyo

Wschód, Warsaw

EXIT, Hong Kong

mother’s tankstation, Dublin, London

XYZ Collective, Tokyo

Federico Vavassori, Milan

Öktem & Aykut, Istanbul

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Felix Gaudlitz, Vienna

Park View / Paul Soto, Los Angeles

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Exclusive Partner :

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The Power of Choices – the Fondation Louis Roederer

Annie Silverstein, Bull, 2019. © DR.

If the name Louis Roederer evokes one of the most beau tiful and illustrious champagne brands (founded in 1776) —a family brand proud of its independence—the name is equally associated with its foundation.

Because of i ts energetic and dedicated patronage, the foundation is counted today among those philanthropic ar t organizations most sought after by museums, institutions, and cultural festivals. This autumn, the foundation awarded its Revelation Prize at t he Deauville American Film Fest ival, a s we l l a s i t s R e s e a r c h Fe l l ows h i p f o r Photography at the BNF in Paris, and it also renewed its suppor t of the Grand Palais wi th i ts Toulouse -Lau t rec ret rospective, showing from October 9, 2019 to January 27, 2020. We speak to Frédéric Rouzaud, the Executive President of Louis Roederer and the president of the Foundation.

L’OFFICIEL ART : From its formal inauguration in 2011, the Louis Roederer Foundation has developed its roadmap for supporting the world of culture, whether photography, film, modern art, or contemporary art. How did this vision come about, and how did the foundation’s goals come to be defined?

FRÉDÉRIC ROUZAUD: On the whole, our blueprint developed over time, intuitively, and through friendships that developed naturally in the course of things. The beauty of these interactions with people in the art world is that they came about spontaneously, without fuss, from common values, and from a desire to discover new talent. It isn’t a concerted agenda,

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planned for decades: everything is done by steps, taking the necessary time to build. This project remains modest, yet steadfast, with a fixed budget and a small team: Michel Janneau, the Executive Vice President, leads the foundation’s work and Charlotte Llareus in charge of PR. Being interested in what’s going on around us has always been a part of the family, for generations this has been true. My great-grandfather offered property to the city of Reims so that hospitals could be established there. Then this precedent was followed up in the arena of culture by my grandfather, then by my father. For twenty years or so, our patronage has focused on photography, most notably at the BNF. The foundation’s creation in 2011 has brought about increased support for the Palais de Tokyo, the Grand Palais, the Deauville Festival, Rencontres de la photographie in Arles, and, since last year, the International Critics’ Week in Cannes. Ours is a family business; we always are led by an intuitive sense, while respecting a core set of values. For us, the human is fundamental.

You joined the business in 1996 and became Executive Director in 2006. The image of your foundation is forever being refined and reaffirmed as the foundation develops over time. What is the impact of this within the House itself?

This always surprises me. Because I feel as though we work on a rather small model. At the same time, it’s true that we have taken on a certain stature, which is felt in the realms of art, photography, and film. This pleases us immensely. It’s an agreeable balance, beginning with the wines that we produce: our values are what gives coherence to our project. It’s an alchemical reaction between our values, our interactions with others, and the time accorded to the task: it takes time to make a great wine, just as for building up a foundation. There’s no shortage of projects: I want to meet artists, it’s one of my passions, and it helps nourish our creativity, both mine and that of our teams, in a sort of ecosystem running along the edges of our wine-making. We aren’t artists but contemporary artisans working the

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grand terroirs, which we work like a precious stone, year after year. Artists have more freedom than we do, who “only” make champagne. But there’s a similarity, a natural connection. Artistic patronage has contributed to how the people who work our vineyards find joy in what they hold in their hands, and has encouraged them to explore beauty and purity.

You support the International Critics’ Week in Cannes and the Deauville American Film Festival, and so you serve as an incubator for new talent. But in addition to this forward-looking perspective, you support the large institutions of French cultural patrimony, like the Grand Palais and the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition.

Film isn’t so different from photography—it’s the same dream that brought the two about. America is important for our business, it represents a historical market, so it was important that we were active in the Deauville Festival. We have a special love for the discovery and the support of emerging artists who have already produced remarkable work. And we’re never the ones who award the prize, we act on the recommendations of the institutions, the juries, the expert teams that have a rigorous selection process for these young artists. And if we have an interest in photograph and film, we’ve chosen to not participate in the deliberations and to leave the selection to the jury of experts. As for patrimony, it’s a notion at the core of our House. But also our support of the BNF and its remarkable collection of photography didn’t run crosswise of our support of young talented researchers through the bias of a research fellowship. We support as well the Palais de Tokyo and the Grand Palais, but we’re not art experts, and we’re not notable collectors, and so we don’t have, I don’t think, any legitimate basis through which to create our own contemporary art prize.

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This convinced us that it was best to support institutions and to point out which exhibitions and which artists in their programming interested us in a very intuitive way. It comes about through a feeling, without any calculation: they are artists on the rebellious side, some more, some less famous, and sometimes hidden in the shadows a bit, like František Kupka, who lived at the beginning of the 20th century—a real pioneer, not well known, and yet someone with a profound influence. What we like about them is their character, their personality, the fact that they were overlooked by their time. This is also true of Toulouse-Lautrec.

Your choices and your methods make you stand out among patrons of the arts …

It’s a discrete form of patronage, even if we hope it to shed a positive light on the House. It’s respectful, and independent from the House itself. If the prizes bear the name Louis Roederer, there is obviously a desire for visibility, but we’re not involved in a narcissistic type of arts patronage: we rely upon art experts. We buy works from each exhibition in which we have participated, from each artist whom we have supported, with the idea in mind of putting together little by little a collection for the business, which today is still small, with only twelve or so works. It’s not always easy, but it’s our project …

At the 2019 Deauville American Film Festival, the Louis Roederer Foundation Revelation Prize was awarded to the film Bull, directed by Annie Silverstein.

The Fondation Louis Roederer is supporting the exhibition “ToulouseLautrec: Resolutely Modern,” from October 9, 2019 to January 27, 2020, Grand Palais, Paris. grandpalais.fr

From left to right: Máté Bartha, Kontakt XXXV, 2018. Courtesy: the artist.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, La Roue, 1893. Photo: João Musa. © São Paulo Museum of Art.

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Audemars Piguet : Ideas and Convictions

Ryoji Ikeda, Data Verse, 2019; projector, computer, speakers; 10.24 x 5.4 m; installation view, 58th Venice Bienniale. © Ryoji Ikeda Studio. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia, the artist and Audemars Piguet.

Strongly commit ted to contemporar y ar t through their support of several art fairs, including Art Basel, Audemars Piguet watchmakers is present for the first time at the Venice Biennale (until 24 November) . On this occasion we met Olivier Audemars, Vice President of the company.

L’OFFICIEL ART : Autumn 2018 marked another step forward in Audemars Piguet’s support for the world of contemporary creation as part of Tomas Saraceno’s exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo. What do you remember from this experience and of the encounter with the artist?

OLIVIER AUDEMARS: The goal of our involvement in the field of contemporary art is to contribute to the realization of a project that surprises us, that allows us to discover new territories and that inspires reflection. This realization began with the photographs made at our request by Dan Hodlsworth, which gave us access to a totally different vision of the Joux Valley, where our factory is located. We wondered why people had settled in this very beautiful, harsh climate. We then understood the extent to which artists have the capacity to show reality in a new way, to dissect its depths and, as a result, to clarify it. This experience allowed us to broaden our network of knowledge and we allowed ourselves to collaborate more directly with certain artists. Up until that point, we had always called on our committee of experts from the Audemars Piguet Commission, set up in 2014, which each year presents

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a project within the framework of Art Basel, Hong Kong or Miami. I thus had the opportunity to further discover the work of Tomas Saraceno as part of the Berlin Gallery Weekend—of which we are partners—acquired one of his works and, as a natural extension, his gallerist invited us to a meeting in his Berlin studio. Saraceno was working on his exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo, and it was there that the idea took shape of collaborating on this project. We were so excited that we also wanted to exhibit the work of the artist at Art Basel Miami Beach. It should be noted that this project, like that of Lars Jan (presented at the 2018 edition of Art Basel) devoted to the rising of waters in Florida, addresses environmental issues that are among the topics we are attentive to, and that are embodied by our Foundation, which was established in 1992 to work for the preservation of forests around the world.

A new milestone has also been reached in terms of the breadth of your support, because this year Audemars Piguet asked the musician and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda for a trilogy of works, the first of which was unveiled as part of the Venice Biennale. What was the genesis of this project?

Ryoji Ikeda’s work has long been our focus, his installations are impressive in many ways, including for their mathematics, a discipline that interests me personally. We had planned to organize a screening on the beach as part of Art Basel Miami Beach. In the end this did not materialize, but we have kept in touch with the artist. In addition, we have a special relationship with CERN, and at the 2018 edition of Art Basel, we presented Halo, a work created during the residency at CERN of the British duo Semiconductor.

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Ryoji Ikeda, Data-flux, 2017; 12 video projectors, computer, speakers; 41.3 x 4.5 x 36 m. © Ryoji Ikeda Studio.

Ikeda was also artist-in-residence at CERN, so we noticed that besides his work on sound and light, he developed an interest in cosmology, data collection and data processing... Our support for Ikeda’s project is thus a logical continuation. The artist indicates that after researching the data collected over the past fifteen years, he has reached a type of completion, and what he is presenting at the Venice Biennale is a way of concluding this stage of his artistic work. The exhibition of this work is constructed in three parts: after the infinitely small exhibited at the Biennale, the work will approach the human scale, then the infinitely large. This collaboration is therefore for the long term, and each demonstration will focus on presenting the totality of the experience, but with an evolution.

Continuing your series of collaborations with creators (artists, designers), you featured, at Art Basel Hong Kong (then in Basel) the collector’s lounge, made by Fernando Mastrangelo: how does this collaboration fit into the overall frame of your previous projects?

The backbone of our initiatives in contemporary art is our Art Commission, which each year selects a project. In general, it is an emerging artist, who has managed to reach a stage that allows him or her to master extremely complex projects: we accompany this person in the realization of work which remains their property, which allows the work to continue to have its own existence. In some cases, we then help the artist to circulate the work, or even to allow it to evolve. That’s what happened with Sun Xun, when in 2016, at Art Basel Miami Beach, we exhibited his 9-minute animated film: this project was subsequently selected by New York City to be shown in July 2017 as part of its program “Midnight Moment”: between 11:57 and midnight, the Times Square billboards broadcast an extract of the work, which gave him considerable visibility. Such an experience is doubly rewarding: it allows the artist to take an additional step, and gives us the ability to observe how a project in which we have participated in a significant way can have another dimension. Besides our Art Commission, we thus sought out established artists such as Tomas Saraceno and Yoshi Ikeda.

And a third prong led us to ask an artist or a designer to spend a period of artistic residency in the valley of Joux, to later express their vision of the valley as part of our lounge. The first interpretation was entrusted to Matthieu Lehanneur, then we collaborated for three years with Sebastien Errazuriz who treated each element separately: ice, forest, and fire, and Davide Quayola. With Fernando Mastrangelo, the interest is focused on

the geological aspect of the valley. Thus, each of these creators expresses a point of view, corresponding to their sensibility, of the region where our factory is located: a vision that we integrate into our lounge. Indeed, one of the goals of our lounges is to communicate to our visitors the essence and spirit of the place we come from.

Audemars Piguet is more specifically associated with Art Basel, which it has been supporting since 2013. Why and how did the link with the Venice Biennale take shape?

What interested us with Art Basel is the common cultural roots—since we are dealing with Switzerland—but also the international scope. So when we are in Hong Kong, we have the opportunity to meet artists from mainland China, Taiwan, Japan; at Art Basel Miami Beach, we come into contact with artists from Cuba, Mexico, California... Each edition allows us to better understand the reality of people living in these different regions. And this occurs at a deeper level than can be grasped through financial or economic ties... This is a way for us to understand our environment differently because, to a certain extent, we can to say that artists are cultural translators, who help build bridges between different cultures and better understand what’s going on. They thus help prepare the business for a world that is constantly evolving, and grant access to a deeper level of understanding of our environment. When the idea of the trilogy materialized with Ikeda, we thought it would be great to be able to present it at the Venice Biennale, but as part of a satellite space. Ralph Rugoff, curator at the Biennale, asked Ikeda for a work presented in the International Exhibition at the Arsenale. This made it possible to reach a new dimension, but one which was not part of the original plan. What we have seen is that our principle of sticking scrupulously to contemporary art as a way of learning a certain number of things, and not just looking for a marketing concept, has given us a credibility with artists as well as curators and gallery owners. This broadens our possibilities for presenting ambitious projects in spaces that were previously inaccessible to us. As for the evolution of our initiatives in the artistic field, it is impossible for me to say precisely what will happen, but this is also the beauty of the thing... The key element in my view is to create as many opportunities as possible, then, depending on the stage we have reached and the state of our thoughts, to make the decision to tackle one particular challenge rather than another... We have guidelines, but we keep for ourselves a certain margin of freedom.

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All Goude!

In 1990, the art director Jean-Paul Goude produced an ad campaign for the Chanel perfume Egoïste. It became a cult classic and marked the beginning of a long partnership between the House of Chanel and Goude. The exhibition “In Goude We Trust ! ” explores these important years for creative advertising and inc ludes familiar images from our c ollective imagination – most notably, those from Goude’s ad campaign for the perfume Chance.

After its run at Nexus Hall in Tokyo last year, the exhibition is now on display in Milan’s splendid Palazzo Giureconsulti. Thomas du Pré de Saint Maur, head of creative resources for Chanel’s beauty, timepieces, and jewelry divisions, speaks to us about the show.

L’OFFICIEL ART: Since that first collaboration on the launch of Egoïste, Chanel and Jean-Paul Goude have worked together on many projects. Which, in your eyes, are the most important in this thirty-year period?

THOMAS DU PRÉ DE SAINT MAUR: I see three periods.

First, that of beginnings, of an incredible vitality, of a feverish, exalted creativity, with the film ads Egoïste (1990), Coco (L’Esprit de Chanel) (1993), and Egoïste Platinum (1994) as high points. The second would be that of the perfume Chance, from the first film ad to the launch of Chance Eau Tendre – a period bursting with energy and youth, with perhaps even childish accents, or, simply put, an overwhelming effervescence. The third, then, would be that of the last film ads for Chance, from Eau Vive onward, a period that retains the freshness of beginnings, but is more representative, I think, of the root identity of Chanel: they are parables of play, risk, luxury, and the status of being one of the elect, of having been chosen. Then, in the background, there is this idea that perfectly matches the sensibility of the line of Chance perfumes – life is full of happiness.

Collaborations between fashion houses and artists are often very fruitful and produce remarkable results for the public, but also for the artists. Without a doubt, Chanel allows its commissioned artists to explore new terrain and modes of expression. What new vision of the company would you say Goude brought to Chanel?

Goude’s most notable contribution to Chanel, among a multitude of ideas, is that of lightness, of a certain irreverence, a jubilation – in short, the marks of youth. Lightness and irreverence are at the heart of the brand, but it’s difficult to talk about it, to express it. Gabrielle Chanel herself recognized this fact: lightness and irreverence aren’t forms of spontaneous expression in her creative universe. That’s the reason why we sometimes seem a little too serious. Then JeanPaul arrived, and without eroding any of this seriousness, without indulging in the ridiculous or fantastical, he added a bit of humor that exceeds the merely anecdotal. His talent is to meld the simplicity of images (images of a certain literalness) with an unexpected imaginative power in the choice of themes and their treatment, like the film ads in the Chance series — bowling, roulette, etc.

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Jean-Paul Goude, Egoiste: Chanel, Rio de Janeiro, 1990; film still.

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Jean-Paul Goude, Chance: Bowling, Eau Tendre, final image, Paris 2015.

Although we criticize the fashion world from time to time for being too ephemeral, the connection between Chanel and Goude has stood the test of time, employing new technological tools over the years to express “the spirit of Chanel.” How would you define this quality, at once tangible and intangible?

“The spirit of Chanel” is a mixture of rigor and freedom, of rules and choice – qualities that define the sensuality of the Chanel woman. Ideas of evasion, dreams, or escapism are not a part of the brand. The confrontation with the real is inseparable from the spirit of Chanel. The Chanel woman’s beauty, elegance, and seduction come from the fact that she lives by the rules, as long as they support her identity and her freedom.

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“In Goude We Trust!”, an exhibition by Jean-Paul Goude, Palazzo Giureconsulti, Milan, November 15 – December 31, 2019.

Take Your Chance, a public dance competition, will take place over four days with a judging panel including Jean-Paul Goude and the choreographer Ryan Heffington. The first 500 dancers to sign up will be able to compete. Four winners will be selected through the audition process and will travel to Paris for Fashion Week, visiting the Opera Garnier and other Parisian landmarks.

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Jean-Paul Goude, Slave to the rhythm, 1986; cut-up transparency, Paris.

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II . Cor porate Collec t ions Societe Generale, Frédéric Oudéa , CEO of Societe Generale 76 – 81 Renaul t , Ann Hindr y, Curator of t he collec t ion 82 – 87 Colas G roup, Her vé Le Bouc, Chair man of t he Colas G roup 88 – 93

Texts and interviews

by Emmanuel Rubin and Yamina Benaï

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Felice Varini, Ellipse pleine/vide bleue, Ellipse pleine/vide rouge, 1996 © Paris ADAGP 2019 - Collection Société Générale.

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L’ O F F I C I E L A R T

E D I TO R S ’ N OT E After exploring in previous issues the project of the Foundation of Contemporary Art ( L’Officiel Art no.19, September 2016) and various commitments in the fields of cultural philanthropy and sponsorship ( L’Officiel Art no.26, June 2018), we believed it was necessary to highlight those companies that have chosen to devote funding and energy to the acquisition of artworks intended primarily for employees and company partners.

We have reflected on the identity of each of these corporate collections, the synergies developed, the shared values, their content, the purchasing policy, and the role they play in the art market through support for artists and galleries, as well as possible extensions through the creation of a prize or foundation.

We met three major French companies with an international presence: Societe Generale, Renault, and Colas Group. Each of them illustrates a specific model and demonstrates a strength of purpose often linked to the original ambition of an individual. These leaders, driven by their cultural inclinations and the acuteness of their progressive vision, are eager to include all of their teams in what they consider to be a shared project – one that they try to give the greatest possible visibility. They do this by opening their collections to the public, or by organizing exhibitions beyond the company premises.

The strength of the unifying collective constitutes a form of support, both for young artists and for those unjustly neglected by the history of art, as well as a mode of recognition granted via entry into the collection.

by Emmanuel Rubin and Yamina Benaï

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SOCIETE GENERALE

“In a world increasingly divided and tense, access to culture is primordial.”

Interview by Emmanuel Rubin and Yamina Benaï

Since its inception in 1995, the Societe Generale art Collection set up numerous initiatives to expand its selection of works, to make it available to the widest public through exhibitions in France and abroad, and to build bridges with the projects led by the Societe Generale Foundation that operates in occupational integration and education through sports and culture. Its success is a case in point.

L’Officiel Art met Frédéric Oudéa, CEO of Societe Generale.

Frédéric Oudéa, CEO of Societe Generale © Photo Societe Generale.

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L’OFFICIEL ART: With more than 550 original artworks and 750 multiples, the Societe Generale Collection, created in 1995, now features both historic al figures and emerging artists. What were the circumstances of its inception and what is your take on its evolution and identity?

FRÉDÉRIC OUDÉA: The Collection was founded on the initiative of Marc Viénot [CEO of Societe Generale from 1974 to 1986 then chairman and CEO from 1996 to 1997]. This initiative coincided with the move of Societe Generale from its former headquarters in Paris to La Défense. I think that in some way, Marc Viénot wanted to symbolise this move from tradition to modernity, from the traditional headquarters to the La Défense district, which at the time was quite daring. The different spaces of the new buildings allowed for a collection that could be displayed and visible by all the employees of the bank and would leave a mark on these new grounds. We wanted to carry on from there, to make the collection last, and to keep in line with the initial idea of making it available to all co-workers.

Through the years, we developed and expanded the initial mission by associating our collaborators to the project. We wished to build a collection whose artworks would be accessible, triggering an immediate reaction – positive or negative – from the public.

W ho is p ar t of t h e a c q uisi t io n committee created in 2003, and how can employees of Societe Generale get involved?

We ask the employees who want to be part of the acquisition committee to write a letter of intent. After an interview with mandated independent experts, the chosen employees can join the selection committee. This committee is doing a preselection of new artworks: the idea is to add pieces that show the presence of Societe Generale abroad. The last selection is collegial: a meeting is organised with members of the direction, the voluntary employees chosen for the mission, and two specialists. We all discuss together, every one of us expresses their opinions, and at last, we all come together, mostly harmoniously, towards the final choice.

These exchanges were an opportunity for me to understand better the bond and fondness that grow between a co-worker and an art piece and the importance of its potential presence in the Collection.

Societe Generale is widely established abroad : what is the international dimension of the Collection?

The Societe Generale Group can be found in more than 60 countries. We want to materialise our commitments in each of these countries, whether it be through patronage or sponsorship. This

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sense of unity, harmony, and consistency in our commitments – in the fields of contemporary art, music, rugby, and solidarity – contributes to the cohesion of the Group. As a result, it is a collection that travels according to the opportunities and projects that feel relevant. For instance, since I was the President of the patrons’ committee of the FranceRomania Season, we set up an exhibition at the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Bucharest, where about 20 of our artworks have been displayed. On top of that, these last few years, our subsidiaries have been autonomously building their own contemporary art collections. Our subsidiary in Marocco, for instance: with 1,300 pieces, it is one of the biggest Societe Generale collections outside of France. Tunisia and Algeria are also very active in that respect. In Tunisia, the subsidiary will open its collection to a broader public in a new location where it will be fully accessible, and in Algeria, the subsidiary chose to offer an annual prize to Algerian painters. In Côte d’Ivoire, our subsidiary started its own collection as well and is currently working on opening an exhibition space and artist residencies.

What does involving your colleagues in your work related to the Collection mean to you?

I think that in a world increasingly divided and tense, access to culture in primordial.

These actions and policy of openness are in tune with the values of solidarity, commitment, and team spirit dear to Societe Generale. This is also why we created the Societe Generale Foundation for Solidarity in 2006. Its mission is to support education and occupational integration. We consider working with associations that help people to get back to the professional world the duty of a company. In 2014, our Foundation extended its field of action notably to education and integration through sports and culture. We work to facilitate the inception of places offering activities – music, hip hop, classical guitar... – to the youth so they can overcome limitations and borders. This is what the Ali Zaoua Foundation, par tner of the Societe Generale Foundation and our Maroccan subsidiary, does. A culture that is shared, interdisciplinary, and transnational is a valuable asset. We have a role to play in connecting people. To achieve that, culture is a wonderful medium.

How do you choose the orientation of the purchase policy of the artworks (sculptures, paintings, photographs) and what is the annual budget allowed?

We chose to not communicate on the exact budget. It allows us, within its limits, to acquire each year one or two major works that can cost up to tens of thousands of Euros. We also purchase via galleries very interesting artworks of young artists. I like this balance between pieces by emerging artists and works by very famous artists.

For instance, we commissioned a sculpture from Jean-Michel Othoniel, Le Nœud grec, set in our trading rooms building. I would like to point out that thanks to our acquisition committee’s expertise, we purchased pieces by great artists like Pierre Soulages and Zao Wou-Ki at opportune times.

You joined the Societe Generale Group in 1995 and worked in different positions before being named CEO in 2008. Your taste for art and music can probably be put to use in the actions led by Societe Generale. How did you envision your mission regarding this three-decades-old Collection?

I believe in long-term commitments. It is true for rugby just as it is true for musical patronage and contemporary art. We have been carrying these commitments for more than 30 years. Our vision and expectations are never short-term. These choices have internal repercussions: just like art occupies our buildings, our employees take part in a project I would describe as exceptional. In 2013, with François-Xavier Roth, conductor of the Les Siècles Orchestra, we launched a mixed orchestra composed of professional musicians, Societe Generale employees, and a 300-people choir mostly made of Societe Generale employees. It is a way of bringing unsuspected callings or talents to the surface. This association of professionals and passionate amateurs turned out to be a complete success, both individually and collectively. The ambitions and energy were such that we quickly envisioned a concert at the Salle Pleyel, one of our partners. Since 2015, the project took an international dimension: Royal Festival Hall in London in 2017, the involvement of Senegalese and Romanian employees in 2018, and Russian and Ivorian employees for 2020.

We now perform at the Philharmonie de Paris, another partner venue. Singing

What are your preferences when it comes to painting?

Personally, I like the French production from the 1950s-60s, so I am especially pleased that the Collection features works by Atlan, Georges Mathieu, and Geneviève Claisse… Just as it features pieces by the young Julien Des Monstiers that we identified through the work of the specialists collaborating with us. In the future, we will maybe have the opportunity of buying paintings by Jean-Baptiste Sécheret, whose studio I had the chance to visit and who I especially like. The fact of purchasing works by young or unjustly underrated artists is also, according to me, a way of providing both support and a form of recognition that comes with the fact of belonging to the Collection.

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François Morellet, Les 16 Côtés du carré, 2001 © Paris ADAGP 2019 - Collection Societe Generale.

Geneviève Claisse, Cercles, 1968 © Paris ADAGP 2019 - Collection Societe Generale.

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Julien des Monstiers, Brand New Old, 2016 © Julien des Monstiers – Collection Societe Generale.

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Liu Bolin, Hiding in the city – Paris 03, 2011 © Liu Bolin - Courtesy Collection Societe Generale.

together generates so much joy and pride; it is an extraordinary tool to straighten the cohesion within the company. At a time when some build walls, we aim to show that culture can be globally shared.

Initially intended for the collaborators of Societe Generale, the Collection’s public widened thanks to exhibitions organised in museums and institutions: how do you introduce the Collection to the wider public?

On an almost daily basis, we organise guided tours for the general public – collaborators, partners, customers, students, school groups – and, by reservation, for anyone who shows an interest in the Collection. It also lives through dif ferent displays realised by mandated independent curators.

Indeed, except for a few pieces like our Soulages painting, the artworks exhibited change regularly, following the different thematic exhibitions we program. It is also important to us to highlight the

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most recent additions to the Collection.

Around a certain theme, we draw parallels between new works acquired in France and abroad and bet ween dif ferent media. Photography, especially depicting architecture and urban construction, is prominent: we aim to explore these subjects as much as we can. As their reactions and questions show, the 14 years-old students, often coming from disadvantaged areas, we welcome for one-week-long internships respond enthusiastically to the artistic initiation we provided them with.

What do the presence of art and the existence of such a Collection bring to the Societe Generale Group?

We try to draw a coherent picture with all our actions, always put ting the involvement of the collaborators at the forefront. To me, it isn’t just about signing a check, it is about involving the employees in the choice and thus in the life of the company. This premise is very dear to

me. If the budget allowed to a certain project plays an obvious part, I always try to go beyond simple financial support and make sure our collaborators get involved in what is happening, for instance through mentoring in associations we support.

Here lays the real dif ficult y. Many companies can contribute financially, but to make sure that the teams get involved in the project, invest ideas and energy so it can be completed, and can be proud and satisfied with the outcome is a challenge of another level. “You are the future”, our new signature, which suggests that our bank is here to help you, is what we imply when we buy the work of a young artist. This admission in the Societe Generale Collection can make a difference in terms of confidence, recognition, and credibility with galleries, museums, and collectors. It is also a way of supporting our ambitions for the youth: by opening the doors of the company, we hope they will discover other views and a world that may differ from their daily lives.

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Jean-Michel Othoniel, Le Nœud grec, 2014 © Paris ADAGP 2019 - Collection Societe Generale.

In 2016, the Group asked 8 artists to invest the 5,000 meters-square basement of Les Dunes, the second headquarters of Societe Generale in Val-de-Fontenay. What did you think of this experiment?

At first, some of the teams involved in the move were reluctant, but eventually, everything worked out extremely well because it is such a wonderful place. The spaces are completely flexible, without assigned offices: our collaborators like this flexibility. We tried to involve them in this project as well, as far as asking for their opinion about the furniture: the place has been co-constructed with the employees, which is a success in itself.

In that respect, we reached out to these eight artists to mark a high point. We worked with the real estate management and the city council to choose local creators through an association. Each of them was given a surface of about 1,000 meters-square. The idea was to start from an interpretation of the signage system

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found in the parking lot. It was such a success that collaborators have wanted to get involved, with the help of a street artists collective, in the realisation of frescoes in the ground level of the building.

could be launched within the program. It is a great opportunity for Societe Generale: we are widely established in Africa where we started a development program that supports positive changes throughout the continent. The project is wide and enthralling.

We used the same tools – working with local people for better integration in the district and consultation of the employees – to give them moments of openness, breakaways, pauses in their daily life. I think it is a breath of fresh air, a break from increasingly demanding tasks. Banking is a tough job and these activities and cultural exchanges we offer our collaborators are positive, unusual experiences that open new horizons and feed their personal path.

An essential tool: mediation Besides the guided tours of the Societe Generale Collec tion available for all by reservation, digital tools are used for education as well. The Collection has its own website listing all its artworks. On top of that, for the new exhibition “Little Stories”, an application has been developed: it provides information on a piece and the artist that made it by taking a picture of it.

After the France-Romania Season 2019, what is the upcoming program for the promotion of the Collection?

We just unveiled the “Little Stories” exhibition that focuses on active learning and the reception of the artworks by the public. We are now working on the Africa 2020 Season.

We are thinking about different actions that

“Little Stories”, sharing 1001 stories and anecdotes around the artworks of the Societe Generale art Collection, exhibition open to the public and free for all from the 20th of September 2019 to the 30th of April 2020, every day from 9.00 to 18.00.

Closed on the weekends. By reservation at visites@collectionsocietegenerale.com

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RENAULT

“Nothing can replace the determination and commitment of those at the birth of the idea.”

Interview by Yamina Benaï

Renault’s trailblazing modern art collection, established in 1967, constitutes a paradigm, in both its radicality and richness, and its troubled history and resurrection under the auspices of an enlightened CEO. Ann Hindry, curator of the collection, defines its limits and contours.

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Ann Hindry, curator of The Renault Collection photographed by Georges Poncet, 2019.

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Jean Tinguely, Requiem pour une feuille morte, 1967. Photo: Georges Poncet.

L’OFFICIEL ART: The Renault collection is atypical in a number of ways: for its innovative nature, as it was founded in 1967 when the relationship between business and art was almost non-existent; and for its intention, which was not to focus on the direct acquisition of works, but rather to forge fruitful links between avant-garde artists and the company.

ANN HINDRY: The general context was, at that time, fundamentally different.

Indeed, in the latter years of the 1960s, contemporary art didn’t attract much attention, to put it mildly. There was very little exposure, except in some innovative galleries. Claude-Louis Renard, the founder of the collection, was one of those rare people able to grasp the importance of the potential that building bridges between large companies and contemporary art could represent. To carry out this project he received the support of Pierre Dreyfus, the CEO of Renault at that time, to whom he proposed a visionary approach, namely: inviting artists to come and experience the reality of a large industrial company. Renard was close to some artists, including Jean Dubuffet. Already highly acclaimed, with a significant market presence, Dubuffet was the engine of the project and gave it an external visibility. But one of the initial drivers of its implementation lay in the very identity of Renault itself, which, by way of its founder, was strongly committed to innovation, in whatever form it may take. Some company executives were collectors themselves, driven by the desire to know and to understand.

Thus, the relationship between artistic creation and the creation of cars was made concrete, naturally enough at first.

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What, over time, caused the collection’s original purpose to change?

At the time, Renault was organized with no intermediary interlocutors. There were no protocols to impede or make impossible one’s access to the management. Renard benefited from the attentive ear of Dreyfus, which allowed him to directly put in place, with the various department heads, the mechanisms for the artists’ integration into the company. But the approach remained, despite everything, a matter of management – that is to say that the vast majority of Renault employees were not consulted and were not necessarily informed of the projects. Moreover, most of the management staff who were involved had left, and did not communicate to their successors the nature of a subject that had no immediate relevance to the economy or the organization of the company. So, over the years, the idea, the presence, the story of the collection itself began to dissolve.

Renard, who joined Renault in 1954, was close to the writer and politician André Malraux and passionate about art. When he was sent on a professional trip to the United States, in the early 1960s, Renard saw the relationships that were being built between big companies and art. His discovery of the artists then in vogue (Rothko, Kline, Pollock, de Kooning), as well as the active role played by those few large companies in supporting young artists, encouraged him to try out the experiment in France.

Renard discovered in the US that it was possible to establish a link between a large industrial company and the contemporary art in the process of being made. The

major shift was created by the generation of artists that immediately followed the great abstract expressionists you mention, who had almost never had anything to do with other “milieux” outside of art. James Rosenquist and Robert Rauschenberg are among the leading figures of this bridge between pop art and the corporate world.

Thus, the links that some great industrial companies in the US were building with artists, and which did not exist at all in France, were adopted by Renard as a trial model. Without this American example, the Renault collection would probably never have existed, as Renard himself outlined during our exchanges.

By creating the “research, art, and industry” department, Renard set up the mechanism that was to allow the implementation of projects and the dialogue between artists, workers, and engineers. One of the first artists to benefit from this was Arman, who went on to make more than fifty pieces. How did this initial impulse set in motion the work of other artists?

Within that department, Renard was really the boss, reporting directly to the CEO. This gave him considerable freedom of action. This initiative was therefore critical to the success of the project. The group of new realists – of which Arman was a part – was, at the time, an artistic beacon.

The members of this innovative movement were the only ones to get out of the Parisian microcosm of contemporary art, which was quite isolated and focused on itself. The new realists, in their choice of industrial or banal materials, were quite easy to apprehend, and were the first to conquer a new audience for contemporary art. Moreover, they were aware of the

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Art collection at Renault HQ in Boulogne-Billancourt. Photo: Georges Poncet.

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Arman, Accumulation Renault culasses, 1974. Photo: Georges Poncet.

innovative approaches of American artists and thus used everyday objects for their works – this was unheard of in France, but potentially comprehensible to anyone. Arman had the intelligence and the “greediness,” as he himself put it, to use many objects and accessories from industrial cars – headlights, batteries, brake pads – which he integrated into his accumulations. He really helped to launch and publicize the project, making over one-hundred accumulations exhibited and sold around the world, of which some two dozen remain in the Renault collection. The factory was the artist’s field of exploration.

This was a very positive conjunction.

The commitment of Dreyfus allowed the artists to permeate the common areas of the new headquarters at the Quai du Point-du-Jour in Paris: the main hall, landings, corridors, meeting rooms, restaurants, cafeterias. In doing so, Renault intended to enrich the corporate culture, to bring a “supplement of soul.”

The context of this new headquarters, populated by artists who produced works in situ, was exemplary avant-gardism.

During my first visit to this place – which, alas, no longer exists – I was amazed by the grand lobby, which was entirely imagined and created by Jesús Rafael Soto. It was an absolute masterpiece.

It was not a question of some works distributed throughout a space, but of a space that was itself entirely one of Soto’s environmental works. This site allowed Renard to later impose the integration of other architectural achievements by different artists. But we must recognize that no internal communication or pedagogy allowed the company’s employees to

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know what these environments, in which they were circulating on a daily basis, really represented.

Let’s talk about Summer Salon, a sculptural work commissioned in 1973 from Dubuffet, then abandoned after a series of technical problems and growing misunderstandings. The ensuing trial between Renault and the artist tarnished the collection’s image and stymied its dynamics, which, against all odds, continued to be embodied outside the company walls, until the collection was halted in 1985.

It is true that a combination of difficult conditions made the implementation of this magnificent project impossible.

Summer Salon was ver y innovative and its failure was characteristic of disorganization higher up the chain. The engineers’ expertise had alerted them to the excessive weight of the work, which was jeopardizing the structure above the parking lot. Dubuffet, highly involved in his project, which was already far advanced, was quite abruptly told the project was not feasible. The relationship broke down and a long trial between the artist and the company ensued. If the artist’s frustration is entirely understandable, the project, which was unfeasible in its initial state, especially for reasons of staff safety, was also probably too important and innovative for its time. This disrupted the image of the collection and marked, in a way, a stop to major projects.

The collection owes its new impetus to Louis Schweitzer, chairman and CEO of Renault from 1992 to 2005.

He declared that “the collection of contemporary art built by Renault

between 1966 and 1985 is an integral part of the company’s heritage.” He thus decided in 1996 to appeal to you as an art professional: what was your mission at that time?

The task that was entrusted to me was broad: it was to bring the collection up to standard. It was kept in perfect lighting, and perfect hydrometric and safety conditions, but was invisible to the public and staff. The memory was lost, so I had to carry out quite extensive research with the remaining staff who had known the content and elements of its history. I was also able to contact some of the artists. Little by little, with the support of Schweitzer, I reconstituted the whole. Once this initial process was complete, I proposed guided conferences to internal staff to inform them of the existence of this exceptional collection and to identify, show, and explain the works to everyone in an accessible way.

These moments were also an opportunity for me to better understand the identity of the company and to involve, as much as possible, employees interested in acquiring greater knowledge of the collection’s artists, especially on the occasion of public exhibitions that I invited them to visit.

W hat was your impression and your initial recommendations for this collection, which, at the time, numbered 350 works by thirty-five artists?

I extracted the works from the vaults in which they were kept and we settled in the company’s large basements, where I was able to go through the works, record them, and draw up an inventory. Once this step was completed, some works required cleaning and restoration. This stage, combined with an investigative process,

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Wen Fang, Home, 2017 and Ann Hindry. Photo: Georges Poncet.

took more than two years. Then, in order to obtain external support, which was essential in order to validate the quality and legitimacy of the collection, I invited personalities from the art world to visit the collection, on which doubt had been cast regarding the possible “disappearance” of works. It was therefore necessary to restore confidence. The reconstitution of Dubuffet’s Blue Wall (Le Mur bleu) that I had been able to carry out – even though it had been preserved in nineteen boxes, of which I had neither photos nor archives – made it possible to stage the collection again in a reassuring and effective way. Finally, it seemed important to me to inscribe the collection in words and images: I initiated a first book entitled Renault and Art, in which I recounted the story and invited contributions from respected art critics. It was very favorably received by art critics and professionals.

From then on, museums came forward for loan applications and my position became that of a desirable mini-museum.

You have committed to an energetic policy of showing the collection internationally. On what criteria did you base your choices?

Utility, first of all, because organizing exhibitions of this order requires means and local contacts. I worked with the

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communication department to assess the potential of the countries where Renault is based: Japan was the first. In fact, the Japanese are particularly discerning with regard to contemporary art, and are very fond of Western art. This first exhibition was a success that encouraged the company to integrate the idea of continuing the program. Mexico followed, with the same enthusiastic welcome.

Among the latest exhibitions, the one held in Bucharest went well beyond our expectations in terms of attendance, as well as that organized at the Fondation Clément in Martinique. This last example is atypical because the event was held at the invitation of Bernard Hayot, the president of the foundation and a major industrialist at the head of GBH – a global group active, notably, in car distribution.

To d a y , h o w i s t h e n o t i o n o f c o mmissio nin g wo rk to ar t is t s embodied?

From the very beginning, I wanted to modernize and extend the collection. I approach artists likely to be interested in the industrial universe; I present to them the works of the collection, as well as the materials and know-how of the company, which they can have access to; and I invite them to create a work according to their own practice, of course, but keeping in

mind the collection’s profile and the final destination of the work – that is to say its integration into both a large industrial company and a renowned art collection.

So it is not, strictly speaking, a case of carte blanche, but there is a lot of freedom.

To date, we have completed more than fifteen new collaborations. We also started a residency system with fine arts laureates from the EnsAD school of art and design in Paris, for which the prize is a stay of several months at Renault’s Formula 1 workshops in England. It is an iconic place, set in the countryside. The collaborations aim to be as enriching for the artists as they are for the staff of the F1 workshops.

As corporate collections and foundations proliferate, how do you think the Renault collection stands out?

It is born out of a deep interest in art and an intellectual curiosity on the part of some of its senior executives. I think the collection did not start as simply an additional asset for the company, but rather as a vision of what such an encounter could bring to all those concerned. Nothing can replace the personality, determination, and commitment of the people who were there at the birth of an idea. The Renault collection is the incubator of this idea.

This is part of its exceptional profile.

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COLAS GROUP

“It’s the great diversity of visions that interests us.”

Interview by Yamina Benaï

The Colas Foundation, established almost thirty years ago, today brings together nearly four-hundred paintings commissioned on the theme of the company’s core business: the road. Hervé Le Bouc, chairman of the Colas Group, talks to L’Officiel Art about the many facets of this pioneering collection and its commitment to cultural players.

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Hervé Le Bouc, chairman of the Colas Group © Photo library COLAS – Franck Juéry.

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Philippe Favier, 315 route de Peyrus, 2019; 50 x 150 cm. © Fondation Colas / Jean-François Fanet.

L’OFFICIEL ART: Since its creation in 1991, the Colas Foundation has provided support for contemporary painting. What motivated the world leader in transport infrastructure to begin a commitment to art?

HERVÉ LE BOUC: When I was appointed chairman and CEO of Colas in 2007, I decided to continue on the path of my predecessor, Alain Dupont, the founder of the Colas Foundation. Innovation is deeply embedded in the identity of the Colas Group and our mission is to imagine and build the responsible mobility of the future. In their own way, contemporary artists question the world and its future.

They enlighten us and help to amplify our perspective and the acuity of our vision. Our foundation also has an internal goal: to sensitize all group employees – sixty-thousand people in more than fifty countries on five continents – to this universal cultural activity. The paintings in the collection are a bridge between identities and vastly different cultures, in harmony with the Colas Group, which has a strong human dimension to which I am very attached. Art is a vital factor in everyone’s well-being, so integrating it into our spaces was a natural step in our corporate culture.

You commission paintings on the theme of the road: each year a jury of art-world specialists and Colas Group collaborators select a dozen projects out of some two-hundred applications. You have chosen not to use any ranking for the winning artists. Given the diversity of works, the chosen theme does not seem restric tive , even ensuring the consistency of the whole ensemble.

Each year, the foundation launches a call for applications. The choice of a mixed jury, made up of professionals from the

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art world as well as our collaborators, allows us to rely on an external expertise that reinforces the value of our choices, all the while being attentive to the sensitivity of the collaborators who are going to live with those particular works.

This jury selects a dozen winning artists of different nationalities. Each laureate then receives a commission for a painting on the theme of the road, Colas’s historic profession. Apar t from this theme, which reinforces the link between the foundation and the company, all freedom of expression is left entirely to the artists.

All the “roads of the imagination” painted for the foundation since its creation are unique, which is why we decided not to make use of a ranking, with one work taking precedence over another. It is the great diversity of visions that interests us.

Today, the Colas collection comprises more than 360 paintings, by artists of some forty nationalities, hanging in the group’s work and reception areas in France and abroad. What initiatives have allowed employees to familiarize themselves with the works?

Each year, a private view of the new paintings allows those who work at the headquarters to meet the artists, to talk to them about their work, their practice, and the meaning they have given to the notion of the road. For those who can’t be present at this event, we have a virtual gallery on our website showing each painting in the collection, accompanied by information about the artist and the work, and a video of the artist talking about their concept. We have also run conferences – featuring art critics [such as Elisabeth Couturier] , contemporary art news, and a decoding of the high points [with Henri-François Debailleux] – as well as invitations to the directors

of cultural institutions [such as Laurent Le Bon, director of the Musée Picasso, Paris]. Our 2019 laureates, unveiled in March, establish a beautiful and broad cartography of creation: Cécile Bart, Stéphane Dafflon, Blaise Drummond, Erró, Philippe Favier, Gregory Forstner, Minjung Kim, Tingyi Lee, Lucie Picandet, and Florian and Michael Quistrebert.

Before joining the collection, their works will be exhibited in November at the foundation’s headquarters in Paris.

What has the experience of integrating art into the company taught you as a manager?

Very simply, I like that which is beautiful to see or to hear, that which is moving.

Whether it ’s painting, architecture, photography, music or dance, art brings beauty and emotion. It is this relationship to art that I want to share within the company, as well as pride in the work accomplished within the collection, whose diversity and richness reflect the quality of our employees.

What impact do you think the collection has on the image of the company?

It is the image of a mature company that knows and is perfectly in control of its identity, but that goes further by reflecting on its philosophy and on the interactions it can initiate with society, including supporting contemporary creation. This collection makes one proud to belong to such an organization – it is the sign of a human, creative and innovative company that enriches our brand as an employer.

The foundation was a pioneer in terms of commitment to contemporary art. In more than twenty-five years, we have awarded prizes to some 360 artists from all regions of the world ; each ye a r we re c e i ve m o re t h a n t wo -

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Top: Blaise Drummond, Chagrin Falls (Tips for Mountain Driving), 2019; 122 x 170 cm. © Fondation Colas / Jean-François Fanet.

Bottom, left to right: Tingyi Lee, Rêverie, 2019; 130 x 162 cm. © Fondation Colas / Jean-François Fanet.

Gregory Forstner, The Collector, 2019; 126 x 87 cm. © Fondation Colas / Jean-François Fanet.

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Kim Minjung, La Strada, 2019; 50 x 80 cm. © Fondation Colas / Jean-François Fanet.

hundred applications. We consider this success as a pledge of recognition that encourages us to continue.

The collection is on show in the various group headquarters and also elsewhere, via loans for exhibitions or events. And it was brought to life in The Road of Dreams , a variety show created by Jean-Michel Ribes at the Théâtre du Rond-Point in Paris to celebrate twenty-five years of the Colas Foundation. These initiatives provide the collection with visibility, but also make available the works of the artists.

Our aim is to help young artists prosper, to further their creativity, to increase their visibility. That’s why we set up public events around the collection, like those held at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris or at the Meymac Center for Contemporary Art. We are committed to spreading the word about artists on our Instagram account [instagram.com/groupe_colas] , and to amplify their visibility we reproduce the laureates’ works on tarpaulins on certain building sites.

In 2018, the foundation embarked on a new chapter, with the successful launch of an urban art program at

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the Colas Group’s production and construction sites. What might be the next step?

These urban art projects bring new life to a territory, with young talents creating a bond in the city and reinventing codes. Artistic interventions on the walls of the Servant factory in Villeneuve-lès-Béziers (by Mathias Brez) and on various construction sites were met with great success. We want to continue our policy of partnerships for the realization of painted murals in the heart of the city. The next step is planned for October at the Teenage Kicks biennale of urban art in Rennes, with the creation of a mural by Helen Bur. In addition to the Colas Foundation collection and the urban art projects, the group is pursuing an active policy of sponsorship in music and dance, and also in humanitarian projects.

What triggered your involvement in these areas and how do these projects fit together?

We have developed another mode of artistic sponsorship, Colas en Scène, for music and dance. This was why, for example, we supported Gautier Capuçon [the world-renowned cellist] when he was just starting out, and why for a decade we supported the Akram Khan dance company, which today enjoys international

fame. We have also created a Colas Young Talent Scholarship for virtuoso musicians embarking on an international career.

Moreover, as part of our philanthropic project Colas Life, we have supported educational projects in several countries.

The governance of Colas has recently evolved, with the appointment of a new CEO, Frédéric Gardès. Will the sponsorship policy and the content of the projects of the collection evolve?

It will be up to Frédéric Gardès to decide.

The Colas Foundation’s 2019 laureates are: Cécile Bart, Stéphane Dafflon, Blaise Drummond, Erró, Philippe Favier, Gregory Forstner, Minjung Kim, Tingyi Lee, Lucie Picandet, and Florian and Michael Quistrebert.

A pp li c at ions to t he 2 0 2 0 e dit ion are being accepted until November 4, 2019.

Information can be found at colas.com The 2020 jur y includes : Alain Bublex , artist; Ann Hindry, art historian and curator of the Renault collection; Laurent Le Bon, director of the Musée national Picasso in Paris; Anaël Pigeat, editor-at-large of The Art Newspaper; and Fabien Simode, editorin-chief of L’Œil magazine .

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Top, Stéphane Dafflon, AST 379, 2019; 89 x 130 cm. © Fondation Colas / Jean-François Fanet.

Bottom, left to right: Cécile Bart, Bascule #2, 2019; 150 x 150 cm. © Fondation Colas / Jean-François Fanet.

Florian et Michael Quistrebert, Coal Tar, 2019; 124 x 100 x 15 cm. © Fondation Colas / Jean-François Fanet.

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PA N O R A M A

FRANCE CARTIER FOUNDATION FOR CONTEMPORARY ART (CREATED IN 1984) P romoting c ontempor a r y c r eation t hrough patronage, exhibitions and meetings in a glass structure designed by Jean Nouvel, the Cartier Foundation has a collection of more than 1500 works.

261, boulevard Raspail, Paris.

FONDATION CARMIGNAC (CREATED IN 2000) The Foundation comprises a contemporar y art collection of more than 300 works, the Villa Carmignac exhibition venue on the island of Porquerolles, as well as the Carmignac Prize for photojournalism.

24, place Vendôme, Paris.

HSBC PRIZE FOR PHOTOGRAPHY (CREATED IN 1995) In a competition organized every year, the HSBC Prize for Photography promotes and enhances the talent of two professional photographers who are not yet as well known as they should be. Competition open from September 1 to November 3, 2019.

109, avenue des Champs-Elysées, Paris.

N E U F L I Z E V I E F O U N D AT I O N F O R CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY (CREATED IN 1997) Patronage, prizes and contests for the promotion of contemporary photography.

Collection of more than 700 works.

3, avenue Hoche, Paris.

ART NORAC (CREATED IN 2005) A general interest a ssociation charged with developing the sponsorship activities (development of contemporary creation) of the Norac agribusiness group.

2, place Hoche, Rennes.

LAB’BEL (CREATED IN 2010) Artistic laboratory of the Bel Group, it defends contemporary art through a collection exclusively made up of pieces made after the 2000s, loaned at the Museum of Fine Arts in Dôle. Its latest creation: the 6th Collector’s Edition Box The Laughing Cow® made by Daniel Buren.

85, rue des Arènes, 39100 Dôle.

RAJA ART Permanent collection of some one hundred works installed at Raja Group’s European headquarters near Roissy.

Paris Nord II, 16, rue de l’Etang, Tremblay-en-France.

RUBIS MECENAT CULTURAL FUND (CREATED IN 2011) Rubis Mécénat acquires works of art from artists supported by the fund in order to develop its corporate collection. The works are exhibited in the different offices of the Rubis Group and its subsidiaries. Since

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its origins, Rubis Mécénat aims to establish a dialogue between contemporary art and specific places by joining forces with emerging and mid-career artists.

The fund commissions the artists to create sitespecific art works for cultural institutions and also for the industrial sites of the Rubis Group. For each commission, Rubis Mécénat produces the art work and accompanies the artist throughout the artistic process. The fund also supports the artist in a longer term by purchasing works and editing publications.

46, rue Boissière, 75116 Paris.

FONDATION FERNET-BRANCA (CREATED IN 2011) Distillery classified in the inventory of historical monuments and transformed into an exhibition space by Cabinet Wilmotte.

2, rue du Ballon, Saint-Louis (Haut-Rhin).

BELGIUM ASBL PROXIMUS ART COLLECTION (CREATED IN 1996) Collection of contemporary art located at the headquarters of the telecom group Proximus; accessible to the public.

Tour Proximus, Koning Albert ll-laan 27, Brussels.

LHOIST COLLECTION (CREATED IN 1989) Collection of some 2,000 photographs and sculptures.

28, rue Charles-Dubois, Limelette.

ING ART CENTER (CREATED IN 1987) Originally a private collection, the ING Art Center collection is the result of a genuine commitment to contemporary and especially Belgian art, with nearly 2,500 works.

Mont des Arts/Place Royale 6, Brussels.

BELFIUS ART COLLECTION (CREATED IN 1960) Collection of 4,300 works by Belgian ar tists accessible to the public at Belfius headquarters Place Charles Rogier 11, Bruxelles.

NATIONAL BANK OF BELGIUM COLLECTION (CREATED IN 1972) 1,850 works reflecting the major artistic movements since 1950 and supporting Belgian artists or those living in Belgium. Accessible to the public.

Boulevard de Berlaimont 3, Brussels.

SWITZERLAND BALOISE GROUP ART COLLECTION (CREATED IN 1999) A collection of art, more particularly of works on paper, which may be seen through exhibitions at the Baloise Group Art Forum, but also through an art prize (Baloise Art Prize) awarded each year to two young artists during Art Basel.

Aeschengraben 21, 21 Aeschengraben, Basel.

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B N P P A R I B A S S W I S S F O U N D AT I O N COLLECTION (CREATED IN 1960) This collection of 760 works—able to be seen in BNP Paribas agencies in Switzerland—is structured around European modern art, American abstract art, and dedicated and emerging Swiss artists.

Since 2012 it has been accompanied by the annual New Heads—BNP Paribas Art Foundation Awards, which recognize young visual artists graduating from HEAD in Geneva.

PICTET COLLECTION (CREATED IN 2004) It brings together 780 Swiss works from 1805 to the present day, but also a photography prize, the Prix Pictet, founded in 2008.

HELVETIA ART COLLECTION (CREATED IN 1943) As well as collecting Swiss art and promoting young artists by awarding its own art prize, the company has set itself the task of educating peoplea about art. The collection is comprised of more than 1,800 works by around 400 artists.

Helvetia Art Foyer, Steinengraben 25, Basel.

MIRABAUD COLLECTION (CREATED IN 2011) Collection of 180 works gathering together young and experienced artists.

N E STLÉ AR T COLLEC TION ( C R E ATE D IN 1960) T he N es t l é A r t C o ll e c t i o n b r ing s to g et her international artists, graphic art and site specific art, with 300 artworks at its headquarter, and at the Musée Jenisch Vevey.

Rue Bellefontaine 2, Lausanne.

MIGROS MUSEUM FOR CONTEMPORARY ART (CREATED IN 1996) First focused in the 1970s on Minimal Art, German painting and important Swiss works, now with acquisitions which focus on contemporary art and its predecessors.

Limmatstrasse 270, Zürich.

FONDAZIONE MONTE DEI PASCHI DI SIENA (CREATED IN 1995) The Collection of Art Works is a project initiated in 2004 for the purpose of bringing back to Siena historical art works and objects from the territory.

The important Malandrini Collection of Sienese Photography, begun in 1975, is also attached to the Foundation.

UNITED KINGDOM SIMMONS CONTEMPORARY (CREATED IN 1993) Collection of Simmons & Simmons which reflects some of the energy, commitment and diversity of emerging young British artists.

HISCOX COLLECTION Hiscox enjoys uncovering and encouraging emerging and existing talent.

UNITED STATES THE UBS ART COLLECTION (CREATED IN 1972) Presided over by Mary Rozell in New York City, this collection of more than 35,000 works is recognized as one of the world’s largest corporate collections, promoting contemporary post-1960s artists across more than 70 countries.

JPMORGAN CHASE ART COLLECTION (CREATED IN 1959) Focusing on modern and contemporar y ar t, JPMorgan Chase Art Program oversees more than 30,000 objects in 450 corporate offices around the globe.

THE PROGRESSIVE ART COLLECTION (CREATED IN 1974) Begun a s a works- on-paper collection, the acquisition philosophy evolved to include emerging artists working in a variety of media since the 1980s.

6300 Wilson Mills Road, Mayfield Village, Ohio.

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GERMANY

GALLERIA CAMPARI (CREATED IN 2010) The corporate museum presents a cross-cultural repository that gathers together over 3,000 works on paper.

Viale A. Gramsci 161, Sesto San Giovanni, Milan.

DAIMLER ART COLLECTION (CREATED IN 1977) The Daimler Art Collection comprises about 3,000 works by 800 international artists, from abstractconstructive, conceptual and minimalist works to emerging art.

The Da imler C ontempor a r y, C or por ate A r t Department, Epplestraße 225, Stuttgart-Möhringen.

INTESA SANPAOLO COLLECTION Intesa Sanpaolo’s art collection boasts around 20,000 pieces in total and spans the ages, from Greek Antiquity to Post-War Italian Art, and more particularly 18th century Venetian painting. The Gallerie d’Italia, the group’s museum and cultural center, divides the collection into three exhibition galleries: the Piazza Scala in Milan, the Palazzo Leoni Montanari in Vicenza, and the Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano in Napoli.

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THE DEUTSCHE BANK COLLECTION (CREATED IN 1979) 1,500 works on paper and photographic displays in 700 Deutsche Bank locations plus the Artist of the Year, awarded to an emerging artist who produces work on on paper or photography and who defends social causes.

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III. Intermission Matthew Barney 192 – 193 Michael Wang 98 – 105 Roni Horn 106 – 115 Talia Chetrit 106 – 115 Carol becker 124 – 129 Olympia Scarry 130 – 135 Mauro Hertig 136 – 141

Liz Magic Laser 194 – 199 Francesco Vezzoli 200 – 205 Camille Henrot

By Sarah Demeuse 206 – 211 Sarah Morris 212 – 219 Ari Marcopoulos 220 – 223

Hope Atherton 142 – 143 Yngve Holen 144 – 153 Martine Syms 154 – 161 Isamu Noguchi: Environments of Leisure

By Brett Littman 168 – 173 Christopher Bollen 168 – 173 Florian Krewer 174 – 179 Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili 180 – 185 Becca Albee

By Sarah Workneh 186 – 191

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Texts, interviews and portfolios curated by Olympia Scarry

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Michael Wang The Drowned World

The mechanism of climate change can be reduced to a series of material transformations: air becomes living matter becomes air again.

Burning fossil fuels reverses the chemical transformations of photosynthesis.

Plants, algae, and cyanobacteria change carbon dioxide into the living matter of their bodies. Carbon, reconfigured and recombined, moves from gas into solid.

As the physical remains of ancient photosynthesizing organisms burn, the carbon locked within them transforms again into air, and the energy captured from a younger sun is released.

“The Drowned World” (2018–) names a series of works that engage the organic origins – and the ongoing biological

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consequences – of industrialization and climate change. The works appropriate living matter and the chemical operations of photosynthesis as artistic media.

The found ruins of fossil fuel infrastructure and the ubiquitous atmospheric effects of carbon emissions form their site and context.

In First Forest (2018), a forest assembled from plants closely related to those of the Carboniferous period grows from the ruins of a gasworks. These plants once formed vast swamplands that stretched across the globe – the Earth’s first forests. Over millennia, their buried remains hardened to form coal. As at thousands of industrial-era gasworks, the gasworks that form the site of the work heated and burned coal. First

Forest suggests a speculative climatic future. By returning carbon to the atmosphere, the climatic conditions of the Carboniferous period might be restored.

Here, a Carboniferous forest engulfs the coal gasworks, and a 300-million–year process comes full circle.

The photographs that comprise the series “Carboniferous” depict the fossilized forms of plants from coal deposits around the world. The images offer a glimpse of the ancient forests that, as coal, would fuel the industrial revolution.

While the material imaginary of modernity is dominated by inorganic matter – steel, concrete, and glass – these photographs, produced in a modernist idiom, reveal the hidden organic origins of the modern world.

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1. First Forest, 2018; Polypodiopsida, Cycadopsida and Araucariaceae species installed in coal gas plant, irrigation system, stainless steel viewing platform; installation view, Manifesta 12, Palermo, Italy.

2. First Forest, 2018; site documentation.

3. Calamites Suckowii, Upper Silesia, 2018; digital photograph.

4. Lyginopteris, Alabama, 2018; digital photograph.

5. Lepidodendron, Upper Silesia, 2018; digital photograph.

6. Mariopteris, Upper Silesia, 2018; digital photograph.

7. First Forest, 2018; installation view.

8. First Forest, 2018; installation detail.

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Roni Horn Remembered Words

All images: Roni Horn, Remembered Words—(Whippy), 2012-13; watercolor, graphite on paper, photographed by Ron Amstutz © Roni Horn

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Talia Chetrit Sonic Youth ”Most of these images were shot in the mid 1990s when I was between 13 and 15 years old.”

Soda, 1995-2015; silver gelatin print; 20.32 x 15.24 cm

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Logo, 1996-2017; inkjet print; 58.42 × 81.28 cm

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Boys, 1995-2019; silver gelatin print; 68.58 x 101.60 cm

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Red Eyes, 1994-2017; inkjet print; 76.2 × 50.8 cm

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ESTIMATED READING TIME: 24m31s

Carol Becker The Agitated Now Perceptions of Time and the Contemplative Space of Art

“The Agitated Now” was first presented as the 23rd Annual Kimon Friar Lecture at the American College of Greece in June 2018.

Kimon Friar, U.S. Fulbright Research Scholar in Modern Greek Literature at the University of Athens (1954–1955), was a poet, anthologist, and first major translator of modern Greek poetry.

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CAROL BECKER is professor of the arts and dean of Columbia University School of the Arts. She is the author of numerous articles and several books, including Thinking in Place: Art, Action and Cultural Production and Losing Helen.

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The perception of time is not a direct subject of history; nonetheless, it is essential to how we experience our world and also to how future civilizations will regard and record contemporary cultures. In each period of history, writes the author Byung-Chul Han, time has a unique “scent.”1 We discover this scent in the residues of the art and culture left to us from previous civilizations: their internal lives reflected externally in form. Just as we only are able to observe the wind as it moves through trees or water, rustling the physical world and generating sound, we perceive the complexities of the time in which we live through the embodiment of our own ephemeral experiences – and now through the so-called “rapidification” of daily life and its accompanying anxiety. But we understand our condition most clearly when artists, writers, and thinkers elucidate it, reflecting it back, making it more visible to us.

Artists and writers often play with and manipulate time. They slow it down, speed it up, wend in and out of past and future. They understand that the human imagination is fluid in this regard. When we go to the cinema, for example, we mostly expect and crave a compression of time and events that distills life’s experiences to their essence, and thus makes them more revelatory and exciting. So if we say that a movie is “too slow,” what we often actually mean is that it reflects the pace of daily life far too accurately. Yet some of the greatest film directors have known that to control the pace of the narrative is to allow us to see life more clearly, to dwell on it and savor its nuances. Not necessarily interested in creating action or in entertaining their audiences, such artists are hoping to connect to our deeper selves – and, to do that, they need to slow the story down.

Of this era, we might ask: how do we experience time in the present?

Does it seem rich or impoverished?

Slow or fast? Coherent or fragmented?

Do we ever take the time to contemplate the nature of time? If so, how would we characterize its “scent”? In a healthy society, citizens perceive time as continuous. They live each day with the assurance of sequentiality: one thing following another. There is also a perceived coherent relationship between successive generations. But a society ruptured by war, migration, epidemics, catastrophic natural occurrences, and the fragmentation of families that these circumstances create cannot readily experience a stable sense of time; massive disruptions in daily routines and ex-

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pectations create anxiety about how the future will unfold. Such a state eclipses the ability to live in the present or creates a now that is so exasperating that one can no longer extrapolate enough from it to envision a future. While these events are occurring, it is also often impossible to create a coherent narrative. Only later do poets, filmmakers, and writers take up the challenge of addressing how horrific that period might have been and the ways in which the difficulties of that moment continue today. After World War I, a generation of poet-soldiers emerged, such as Wilfred Owen, who created a body of literature that articulated the devastating pains of war in poetry. Such was also the case during and after the protracted Vietnam War. In his novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien, for example, attempted to articulate what he and his generation of soldiers had lived internally and externally and, in some cases, continue to experience each day.

Those citizens of the United States, like myself, who, at this time, are fortunate enough not to be geographically displaced by history, disaster, war, or politics, often experience less acute and less overt ruptures of time than others do. Yet, even so, many in the US feel that our lives are discontinuous, that we have lost the sense of home that once anchored us to the physical world, that we have disrupted the continuity of generations (families are dispersed across the nation and the world, trying to stay connected), and that we cannot envision a path to the future. But perhaps most prominent – in my country, at least – is the feeling that we are no longer rooted on the Earth, or even within the nation itself, tossed about as we now seem to be by the pendulum of history swinging dramatically from right to left and right again. Distracted by distraction, many people feel that they are barely hanging on, their attention shredded by media, information, and popular culture. Often we do not feel present in the historical moment or in geographical space, and hence we can experience a deep sense of uprootedness. Ongoing conversations focus on the shared belief that time actually has accelerated and that there is not enough of it. Byung-Chul Han does not attribute this sense of acceleration to any actual, physical, transformed condition of the planet, as people have postulated, but rather to the fragmentation caused by the maddening pace of information hurled at us nonstop and a sense that human life has deterritorialized, lost its groundedness, which translates into a sensation that things

are unhinged and have “sped up.” 2 Bombarded by visual imagery and information, we experience an implosion of time and space. Overwhelmed with e-mails, text messages, twenty-four-hour global media updates, Internet access – coming across devices we carry on our person most of the time – we find it difficult to focus on any one image, thought, person, or event for very long. It is not that time has accelerated so much as that we are no longer grounded by continuous time. In an overstimulated world, where there are demands for never-ending, rapid shifts of consciousness, we have to adjust to more input than any human being can comfortably assimilate. We have evolved the technology for round-the-clock media updates, but our psyches still lag behind.

Accompanying this constant disruption of our mental well-being is the rapidification of expectations in the workplace – another result of the proliferation of digital media. Through technology, we are now freed from the constraints of location. Many no longer need to go into an office every day to do their jobs or even live in the same state or country as their employers. But as free as we thus might seem physically, we are, nonetheless, psychically enslaved to a ubiquitous demand for our attention. Yes, we can work anywhere, but the result is that we now work everywhere. There is no “leaving work behind,” because such demands follow us home and sit waiting on our laptops, not observant of the concept of evenings, weekends, or holidays. Although many businesses have adopted clear policies that discourage employers and employees from sending work-related e-mails to each other over the weekend, we know that, early Monday morning, those e-mails will be waiting in our in-boxes and someone will be expecting a response. Now that we are reduced to functioning as round-the-clock laborers, a condition humans have tried hard to move beyond for generations, our lives outside of work, which used to take up more of our time, now take up considerably less.

We might call this present state Crushed Time. In Crushed Time, the normal rhythms the species has become accustomed to over centuries – which included rest; celebration; ritual; slow, deliberate thought; love, delight, and joy; time for and with family – are all threatened. Instead we have an imbalanced sense of hurtling forward as we “multitask,” further fragmenting our concentration. We talk nervously about

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“having no time,” impatiently about “killing time,” or guiltily about “wasting time.” Mostly we feel that “time flies,” or that we have “lost time,” or that we simply don’t have “enough time,” as we futilely try to “stop time,” but we rarely simply enjoy and luxuriate in time. We hope perhaps that meditation or yoga or more sleep might help to slow it all down. We carve out vacations when we attempt to catch up with ourselves and regain the ontological bearings we have lost, worrying all the while about how to hold onto whatever de-accelerated state of consciousness we might achieve.

Because the species has emotional and spiritual conditioning that predisposes us to move a great deal slower than our present, obsessive pace of life allows, we suffer anxiety – an emotion whose origins are obscure but which often takes hold of us when expectations do not match. The rapidity of technology elicits a sense of an omnivorous present, which has created an unrealistic expectation of how quickly humans can actually function. We now assume that traumas of all kinds that occurred only yesterday must be overcome today and decisions that should necessitate careful consideration must be made immediately. Thus there is little time to absorb our reactions to events or to seriously contemplate their consequences for our lives.

So we might ask ourselves: Have we filled the space of consciousness with the rapid and purposeless acquisition of information at the expense of knowledge? Is our collective hyperactivity a way to catch up with a world that is moving faster than we are able to adjust to? Or are we living in Crushed Time because we no longer have the ability to create Contemplative Time?

Even within this dominant condition of acceleration, humans, by nature, actually still do live with more complex perceptions of time than we might at first acknowledge. These perceptions, which reflect a multidimensionality of the human spirit, manifest themselves best in art and literature: the vehicles through which we slow the world down and chronicle our psychic evolution to imagine how our species might foresee and even come to thrive in the future.

The Many Categories of Time Humans actually experience time in multiple ways simultaneously, without always being aware of this complexity or of the particular quality of each cat-

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egory of time. So it is necessary to ask: how can we characterize these myriad experiences of time? In what ways do we respond to them and how do they affect our lives?

Perhaps the most basic category of time is what I refer to as Continuous Time. Continuous Time is the time embedded in the narrative of a lived life. It is traceable, mostly sequential, comprehensible, and historical, although not always direct. It might, for example, be elliptical. Poets such as C. P. Cavafy and others tell us that the journey of life should be lived with breadth and depth, circling back on itself, fulfilling itself with itself and finally touching eternity, like the mystical serpent, the Ouroboros.

Homer’s most famous protagonist, Odysseus, is called anthropos polytropos, often translated as a “man of many turns.” His journey has a beginning and end, but it, too, is elliptical in nature, with dramatic and protracted detours along the way. On his great voyage, Odysseus leaves his home in Ithaca and only returns to his place of origin twenty years later, after experiencing exciting, albeit life-threatening, adventures and overcoming enormous obstacles every step of the way. There is complexity and continuity in his rich and multifarious journey, and of course he is transformed by the process. But although home is never far from his consciousness and returning is always his goal, in the decades spent wandering he has changed, and home, too, has changed.

In the poem “Ithaca,” which I first discovered several decades ago in the Kimon Friar translation, Cavafy tells us that we should savor this journey of life, take it slowly, absorb its meaning.

And in these oft-quoted lines he writes, When you set out on the voyage to Ithaca, pray that your journey may be long, full of adventures, full of knowledge …

Yet do not by any means hasten your voyage.

Let it best endure for many years…3

Odysseus’s journey exists in Mythic Time, which may or may not have a historical correlative. Mythic Time is dependent on a sequential narrative or multiple narratives to convey an imagined series of events that occurred in some inexact, unquantifiable, ancient, or future time.

We know that the events in the Greek myths never could have occurred exactly as told to us; however, we cannot quantify how much within these narratives is pure imaginative invention and how much derives from facts about historic figures who, through gener-

ations of oral storytelling, eventually became larger than life. These narratives – stories that endured because they are exciting and imaginative – also may explain events that took place in an undocumented time. We now recognize them, at least in contemporary incarnations, as metaphoric. They allude to trials we all encounter in our lives and in our psyches, although ours are objectively often of less epic proportions than those of Odysseus. We nonetheless understand and respond to Cavafy’s lines: Of the Laestrygones and the Cyclopes, and of furious Poseidon, do not be afraid, for such on your journey you shall never meet if your thought remain lofty, if a select emotion imbue your spirit and your body.

The Laestrygones and the Cyclopes and furious Poseidon you will never meet unless you drag them with you in your soul, unless your soul raises them up before you.4

Mythic Time is ever present and also, perplexingly, ever past. Because these images are so basic to the way we construct our understanding of the world, they continue to resonate powerfully in our unconscious lives.

They exist in what we might call Archetypal Time. In Man and His Symbols, Jung writes that shared patterns of human thought form clusters of images that endure throughout time and across cultures. Freud thought that these images were “archaic remnants” of the psychic life of the species, and although they repeat throughout human history, they constantly morph and manifest, transform, and evolve into what appear as new forms. 5 These remnants also manifest in what Jung calls “collective representations,” the shared powerful images that live in the memory of the species and can be found again in dreams and in the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and about the nature of our humanness.6 Science fiction, for example, may contain heroic figures that appear in the mythology of most ancient cultures but in their present incarnations mimic the contemporary. For example, familiar warrior protagonists might be depicted wearing a mix of Grecian battle attire and modern, high-tech military gear, as in the US cinema blockbuster Black Panther. In this film, the mythic forces of good and evil once again fight for dominance – as is always true in ancient epics of adventure and war – but the battle is set in an imagined, alternate version of Africa, which, with a utopian twist, is the most technologi-

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cally advanced civilization on the planet, although this fact is hidden from the rest of the world. The ancient archetypal frame is the same: the good warrior will triumph over the evil one; Odysseus will escape the Cyclops. These are originary images, easily recognizable to us.

But the specifics of the narrative are adapted to fit contemporary and future civilizations. The familiar events hearken back to the old so we can more fully understand the new.

This previewing of future potentiality might be said to encompass Prophetic Time. Many of us see or imagine occurrences in our dream lives that then occur in our waking lives. The Prophets of the Old and New Testaments visualized significant events that were about to transpire: cataclysmic natural disasters or annihilating wars, great punishments for destructive behavior. They lived in salvational, eschatological time, the time that marks the end of the world. But some of us often have more apparently mundane prophetic experiences. We may see something in our mind’s eye that has not yet manifested in the world but somehow we intuit it will. Freud could not imagine that the species was able to see future time, which is why he did not create a category for such prophetic images in his comprehensive study The Interpretation of Dreams. He explained these phenomena when they occurred as coincidental or self-fulfilling.7 He only felt comfortable testifying to what could be proven by science and was anxious when he stepped outside his understanding of the rational. 8 In this, he differed with Jung, himself a scientist, but one who also lived in the mystical and mysterious. It did not occur to Freud that time simply might loop back on itself and not be linear at all, as Einstein and other physicists since have proven.

Freud’s understandings predated these more contemporary theories of time and “parallel universes.” Thus it did not occur to him that humans might exist in a multiplicity of times simultaneously or that experiencing these phenomena intuitively was part of human consciousness, whether the occurrences could be scientifically proven or not.

Another way to understand the subjective nature of time is to contemplate the Time of Loss, the time spent negotiating a deep, often immobilizing attachment to a person who is no longer physically present. In Freud’s essay “Mourning and Melancholia,” he writes that “the absorbing work of mourning” is an “inner labor” and is, as labor, a task that takes time to complete. 9 In grief –

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whether due to death or other causes – one has to undo all of the deep connections formed with another person, bit by bit, in order to allow that person to leave the prominent place held in our psyches. It is difficult to withdraw an intense libidinal attachment to another, and thus the person’s absence can persist in the present as pain. Because the grieving process takes place over extended periods of time, some people collapse into grief and remain there for months before reemerging. Some never reemerge. Others feel the pain only much later, if at all. Grief, resulting from loss, also can endure, submerged, affecting our lives and dreams for years after the event, even while unacknowledged by our conscious selves.

When I was a child and someone in my Jewish family died, we retreated into mourning for a week or more. We all “sat shivah.” Of course, as in most societies, we sat collectively; friends and family came and went.

After the week ended, adults close to the deceased continued to wear a rent piece of black ribbon attached to their clothing as they went about their lives, signifying that they were grieving, communicating to others that they might appear distracted, that they were not completely in the time of the present but rather still submerged in the time of loss.

Durational psychic states, such as grief, belong to the larger category of Emotional Time, in which deep feelings continue to dominate our conscious and unconscious lives. A memory of childhood humiliation or joy that might have occurred forty years ago may resonate more profoundly than something that happened only yesterday. These emotional memories of our early lives create the specific Time of Childhood, perhaps the most powerful time of all, because its vividness remains easily accessible to us throughout our adulthood.

We can always draw upon childhood memories in present time. As adults, we may feel that we are forever following a script, constructed during this time of childhood, when the psyche was most permeable and without defense. These images, expectations, and dramas of childhood are often replayed throughout our lives. Eventually, we may begin to want to reframe these narratives and to reimagine them so that we do not keep replicating obsolete patterns. Thus we attempt to free ourselves from the past in order to write the future script anew.

But the images of this time remain ever present. They often live deeply in the unconscious and appear to us powerful-

ly and sometimes repeatedly in dreams.

Much literature is based on the attempt to reorganize the Time of Childhood. Of course, we think of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, J. M. Coetzee’s Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life, Richard Ford’s Between Them: Remembering My Parents, Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, and Emily Dickinson’s poetry and that of many others. These works grew from the desire to give shape to what is most profound in a writer’s psyche: the memories that endure and keep returning, demanding to be replayed, relived, rethought in the present.

Such early memories seem to live in the deep neurons of the body, and as writers struggle to write about their very vivid childhood selves, they return once again to the age they were when these memories first formed. How is this possible? The act of writing memoir draws from the inexhaustible Time of Childhood to negotiate and represent the life of the adult.

These categories of time are important insofar as they demonstrate that time is subjective, relative, experiential, and unique to individuals, societies, and the species itself. In the prevailing contemporary culture, there is little discussion of these complexities of time. But there is an intuitive understanding that what is now absent in most societies is Contemplative Time, which is characterized by depth of thought and concentration.

How can one find the time to think – to experience the spaciousness and timelessness of thought – if forever preoccupied and diverted by the accelerated, demanding pace of now? When do we reflect upon the portion of our lives already lived and the adventures ahead? How can we consider what we have learned from the journey to date?

If the possibility for expansive thought seems impossibly thin, when and how do we find or create deeper opportunities for contemplative time in our lives?

Here we must turn again to art, poetry, and literature to offer a respite from this metallic “scent” of acceleration. If we study a piece of music for long enough, for example, we again become aware of the potential depth of time and resonance of space and their relationship to our emotional lives.

Through concentration, we experience duration, and in duration there is an opportunity to move into deep breathing, which can alter time by slowing down the world. In this way, we begin to experience our own complexity and that of our species’ memory as well.

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Art has the potential to expand our psyches, because art, which taps into all of these categories of time, also exists in a constant, inexhaustible present. It reminds us that, although we function in this accelerated time, we also continue to live in the deep, slow, ancient time of our spiritual selves. Our conscious, earthbound mind is only a trace of the profound mind into which we are able to dive, the mythic sea, the dense water in which the species has been swimming since its beginnings.

We are amphibious beings who carry the memories of our species’ journey, which we can conjure anew through archetypes and images that we write, paint, and dream into conscious being.

This ability to slow down the world, to de-accelerate and inhabit creative, contemplative, poetic time, is an antidote to the crushing and exhausting pace of discontinuous acceleration. Art, filled with the imaginative possibility of a more perfect world or of a new narrative that can inspire us to radically shift the direction of the species, can exist in all these times simultaneously.

The perfection of a work of writing, art, or music can free us from the anxiety of lost time. Artists engaged in all forms of art-making often have an idea or concept that manifests itself only through the process of making the work. And it is during this process, while inhabiting the rich time of concentration, that artists can find relief from the present. They regenerate themselves and recover lost time as they attempt to allow meaning to find form. Art thus can be a public reflection of our shared humanity, articulated through individual voices. The actualized poem then sits silently in a book, the painting quietly on a wall, the sculpture unobtrusively on the ground, and the play hushed until enacted, until a viewer, audience, or reader interacts with its intention. At that point the work is activated and has the capacity to bring order to the world – and it is order that our ungrounded, incoherent, exhausting “agitated now” craves.

Many years ago, I wrote an essay about the philosopher Herbert Marcuse’s final book, The Aesthetic Dimension. It began like this: If pressed on the subject of the political significance of certain types of art, Marcuse often recounted an anecdote that pleased him a great deal. It was about the painter Victor Neep, who when “challenged” to explain the alleged element of protest in Cézanne’s Still Life With Apples responded, “It is a protest against sloppy thinking.”10

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Marcuse particularly enjoyed this unexpected response because it implies that the organized and deliberately focused care and compositional perfection of Cézanne’s seemingly benign painting can be understood as a radical response to the world. Contemplation of this painting might bring order to an otherwise “sloppy” reality.

It might inspire a desire to create coherence, patience, or thoughtfulness – hence, the potential for radical change embedded in a seemingly apolitical work of art. Marcuse locates this experience of contemplating the nature of such art in what he calls the Aesthetic Dimension.11 I refer to it here as Aesthetic Time, in which art and the aesthetic experience serve as catalysts to put the viewer or audience into a contemplative state of mind.

This concept also could be understood as Poetic Time – a profoundly expansive time because it encompasses the entire range of human emotions. Kimon Friar, paraphrasing Archibald MacLeish, writes: “A poem must not mean, but be.”12 Poetic Time potentially can be boundless, without constraints, and can achieve success if artists have the skill to fully actualize their intentions. Our response is always dependent on what we are able to understand about our lives and on what artists are able to shape into form that others can experience and comprehend.

Artists are also capable of envisioning – and perhaps more willing to envision – alternative versions of the future. They will even dare to examine the potentiality of a time when our species may no longer exist on this planet. It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine one’s own death, but it is even more agonizing to imagine the death of the species, our world without us in it. The land artist Robert Smithson called the potential for such a world “ruins in reverse.”13 We might call this future projection Unimaginable Time, the time we dread but which haunts us, unconsciously, nonetheless.

While researching their own work, some artists are willing to contemplate that humans may become obsolete or that we may make ourselves obsolete.

The bad choices we have made, the catastrophic weather we have unleashed, the uncertain effects of the technologies of artificial intelligence and robotics that we have created, ultimately may cause the species to drown in its own wake.

In Frankenstein; or, the Mod ern Prometheus, Mary Shelley specu-

lated about the way in which our own creations might ultimately turn against us. In this 19th-century science-fiction fantasy, she challenged a modern notion of scientific progress by illuminating its darker side. In the 20th century, the novelist Arthur C. Clarke and the film director Stanley Kubrick conceptualized a similar catastrophe. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the robot Hal eventually becomes paranoid and fearful of the humans who created him. He then uses his “intelligence” to destroy them one by one.

Many years ago I was struck by a mural in the San Francisco Bay Area that illuminates the concept of “ruins in reverse.” It depicted an abandoned expressway where there were no cars and no humans; instead the expressway was crowded with endangered species. Mountain lions, buffalo, moose, and other soon-to-belost creatures roamed across a barren highway that overlooked an urban landscape gone to seed – the world as we’ve known it, but ghostly, with no trace of human life. It was a view of contemporary civilization after our demise, when a catastrophic event, or a series of less obvious events, has created an inconceivable, mostly unimaginable time of life on a posthuman planet.

As a species we have invented the mechanisms of our own destruction and have already deployed them in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is an imaginary but not entirely unimaginable idea that we would be gone – not because of anything outside us, but because of our own arrogance, pride, and carelessness. Artists are willing to investigate this potential for the species to self-destruct. Their work is their warning to us to take heed, to slow down, to observe, to pay attention, in order to prevent such destruction.

The act of making art could be understood as taking place in Utopian Time, a time for imagining and for expressing in form that which does not as yet exist. Every act of creation is a purposeful negation of the present moment, a reorganization of the world as the artist or artists would want it to be, rather than an exact representation of how the world exists now. The idea of making art, or even the belief that an interior vision can lead to a unique, external interpretation of the world, is a utopian thought. Because dystopian, totalitarian societies demanding uniformity cannot tolerate individual, unique voices and perceptions of the

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world, art is often the first expression of human individuality to be repressed.

But this creative desire to give form to what Ernst Bloch might call “the NotYet-Conscious,” and to do so in original ways, reveals a key imperative of utopian thinking, which is “anticipatory illumination,” the envisioning of what might become possible within a societal situation.14 But what might become possible is not always positive, however. And artists are often the ones to focus our attention on the dangers of the future, to make us aware of what exists in the present that could become more threatening if allowed to persist. Perhaps this is why the television series based on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale has become so popular – the seeds of this fictional dystopian world already exist in the world at this time.

Artists and writers exaggerate these undercurrents of the present, often placing them in an undetermined future so they might be reflected in a large and visible enough way to be seen and perhaps prevented.

In this sense, Imaginative Time might in fact be the most important time of all. Without Imaginative Time, there would be no process for interrogating the world and no utopian thinking about how the world might become better in the future. Without imagination, there would be no progress in the evolution of the constructed world of our planet Earth, which we humans call home. If we were unable to imagine what does not as yet exist, we could never dream a new thought into being; we would only be able to repeat what we already know and have done. We would only see what already exists, without the possibility of imagining a better version of our world.

Although events in Imaginative Time might have some connection to historical occurrences, they are embellished by the imagination. Prehistoric storytellers might have tried to understand the erratic behavior of the sea, the fury of the winds, the rising and setting of the sun, or creation itself. They created stories to explain actual phenomena before humans could quantify, measure, experiment, and verify – that is, before science, as we know it, developed a methodology to determine facts. Imaginative Time explained causality: the eruption of volcanoes were linked to the fury of angry gods, and so forth. The stories people told themselves attempted to explain the unpredictability of the physical world and often also their

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emotional worlds. In our era, Imaginative Time is often a mirror of all we have become and, at best, a vision of a more healthful future for ourselves and all other creatures – a time beyond discriminatory thought, practices, exploitation, and inequities.

The obsession with time, in one sense, is always about the time of our own lives – the stories that we tell ourselves and that others will later tell about us when we are gone. As a species, Narrative Time – the framework for the story itself – is how we organize and share our stories: birth, life, death, and all in between. We each hope that there will be abundant time within which to live a rich, full life, but we also know that no life feels long enough. There is never time for all the narratives we would like to live, all the adventures we hope to experience, or all the changes in the world we would like to catalyze. But at some point, resistant as we are to the thought, our time will be up.

must be savored as uniquely human: “Ithaca has given you the lovely voyage,” he writes. “Without her you would not have ventured on the way. /She has nothing more to give you now.”15 Perhaps we could call such time the Never-Enough Time, which inevitably must end with our own death, the time of the long journey home to ourselves, when, like it or not, we fulfill the dream of our lives and come to understand that doing so was all we were ever intended to do – and for that, in fact, there was always just enough time.

Cavafy writes that even this most painful understanding of time Notes The phrase “the agitated now” is taken from Ernst Bloch, as quoted in Jack Zipes’s “Introduction: Toward a Realization of Anticipatory Illumination,” in The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays , by Ernst Bloch, trans. Jack Zipes and Frank Mecklenburg (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1988), xix.

1. Han, Byung-Chul. The Scent of Time: A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering , trans. Daniel Steuer (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2017), 18.

2. Ibid. “Chapter 3: The Speed of History,” 20–27.

3. Cavafy, Constantine. “Ithaca,” in Modern Greek Poetry, trans. and ed. Kimon Friar (Athens: Efstathiadis Group, 2005), 38–39.

4. Ibid.

5. Jung, Carl G., et al. Man and His Symbols (New York: Dell, 1964), 32.

6. Ibid., 42.

7. Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams: The Complete and Definitive Text, trans. and ed. James Strachey (New York: Basic Books, 2010).

8. Freud, “Dreams and Telepathy,” in On Creativity and the Unconscious: Papers on the Psychology of Art, Literature, Love, Religion , ed. Benjamin Nelson (New York: Harper Brothers, 1958), 236–63.

9. Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” in Sigmund Freud: Collected Papers, trans. Joan Riviere (London: Hogarth Press, 1949), 4:155.

10. Becker, Carol. “Herbert Marcuse and the Subversive Potential of Art,” in The Subversive Imagination: Artists, Society, and Social Responsibility (New York: Routledge, 1994), 113.

11. Marcuse, Herbert. The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), 7–8.

12. Friar, Kimon, trans. and ed., Modern Greek Poetry (Athens: Efstathiadis Group, 2005), 24.

13. Robert Smithson used the phrase “ruins in reverse” in “The Monuments of Passaic,” Artforum 6, no. 4 (December 1967): 52–57.

14. Jack Zipes discusses these concepts throughout his “Introduction: Toward a Realization of Anticipatory Illumination,” in The Utopian Function of Art and Literature by Ernst Bloch, xi-xliii.

15. Cavafy. “Ithaca,” in Modern Greek Poetry, 3.

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Olympia Scarry Airplane Mode

Olympia Scarry, 43,721 ft / -23F, Color C Prints 2019, Aircraft window size.

Olympia Scarry, 32,001.7 ft / -45F, Color C Prints 2019, Aircraft window size.

Olympia Scarry, 3,721 ft / -23F, Color C Prints 2019, Aircraft window size.

Olympia Scarry, 4,302 ft / -37F, Color C Prints 2019, Aircraft window size.

Olympia Scarry, 28,000 ft / -44F, Color C Prints 2019, Aircraft window size.

Olympia Scarry, 50,007 ft / -39F, Color C Prints 2019, Aircraft window size.

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Mauro Hertig The Perfect Passivity Intermission text by Erik Lindman Mata

Concern: (turning pages) We need a message Strong as a fist punch Maximum effect Action: (turning pages) At your command, Concern!

–– Musicians travel. But what exactly is it that they bring with them? And what remains in the audience after they leave a performance? Could music be like an object, one that only exists when given meaning by those who attend?

–– The landscape opera Die Perfekte Passivität is set on a model airplane field near Basel, Switzerland. The musicians roll their instruments in large suitcases over a corrugated surface, in circles.

Over them the model airplanes fly, in circles. The musicians unpack their instruments and start a dialogue with the sound of the airplanes and the buzzing sound of the suitcases. It is the sonic manifestation of movement, remaining in place.

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The airport is to space what an intermission is to time. It is depersonalized, with the sole function of connecting other spaces. A break needed to connect one reality with another. I am here, I fly, I am there. We exit the narration for a short moment in time and re-enter it in another. Time inside the airport is dedicated to activities we do not normally allow ourselves to indulge in. We take advantage of being depersonalized – buy alcohol, read gossip magazines, eat chips. We are taken out of time.

–– In his pseudo-scientific book The Law of Psychic Phenomena (1893), Thomson Jay Hudson “proves” the existence of ghosts and telepathy. In order to achieve a state in which it is possible to communicate with past and future selves and others, one has to become “perfectly passive.” That is the ultimate requirement for finally being cured of one’s sorrows and depressions. And even further:

“The essential condition of passivity being acquired by the patient, the healer also becomes passive, and assumes the mental attitude of denying the existence of disease in the patient …and affirms

with constant iteration the condition of perfect healthfulness.”

Hypnosis is the go-to technique and is achieved with the help of a pendulum.

Circular movements, remaining in place.

Entering a state of perfect passivity, hand in hand with the treating entity. We leave specific space to enter universal space.

Ghosts start talking to us.

–– Concern: (drunk) I know what’s good Let’s never fight again Action: (drunk) Let’s make love Result: (drunk) Here, take my tired body Body: I don’t obey, I complete I move in anticipation of your opposite I become the end of the chain for it to remain as a whole I become the perfect passivity in order not to be alone The Concern has forgotten about me

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Noëmi Schwank, Antonio Jiménez-Marín and Miguel Ángel García Martín performing Die Perfekte Passivität at Festival Rümlingen 2018. © Kathrin Schulthess.

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Let’s take a step back. The airport as non-place serves as the starting point of the drama, which includes four musicians and a model airplane pilot. None of the musicians are singers and only one will ever really use their voice – late in the opera, to scream their sole aria at the top of their lungs. The characters of the opera are Concern, Action, Result, and Body.

The musicians alternate in representing them, by writing text with loud markers or turning pages with big writing on them.

All dialogue is played out through written words only. The sound of the appearing text (spray cans, marker pens) becomes part of the music, along with the sounds of the surrounding landscape – birds, crickets, distant cars.

–– In her book Pamiati pamiati (2017), the Russian author Maria Stepanova writes about the things inherited from the past and how they change when one approaches them. She concludes that when one wishes to look more closely at these artifacts and their features – when one wants to get to know them – they wring themselves out of one’s grip. They turn rebellious.

At first glance, all the photos, letters, books, clothes, furniture, plants, machines, statuettes, candleholders, shoes, and music that used to be part of a specific person’s woven-together world – but that are now left to the consumption of the willing or unwilling heirs – seem emptied out and scattered. The pattern that connected them, it seems, is gone.

And so, common sense argues that these artifacts can (and should) be used freely.

What Stepanova concludes, however, is that something lingers within these objects. Because when she approaches them – in order to make sense of the disorderly rubble – the items suddenly fire back at her. Their attack and subversion lie in the fact that they refuse to be forced into the arc that she wanted them to belong to. Instead they turn into liquid.

Exploding their meaning, they drip into every nook possible and they usurp memory’s landscape.

Stepanova’s words function in some ways as a reflection of or a counterpoint to a phrase from Negative Dialectics, a 1966

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book by the German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno. In E.B. Ashton’s translation, the phrase reads as follows: “What is, is more than it is.”

Nevertheless, the internal plenitude of objects is not the same in every situation.

Adorno’s observation deals with things in general, whereas Stepanova writes specifically about inherited items.

Stepanova seems to consider the problem of personhood, memory, and persistence, whereas Adorno critiques the positivistic tendency to isolate, solidify, and coagulate.

But there is a similarity between the two writers in that they point toward the irrefutable presence of objects and elevate the question of how to deal with these items. This is a question at the heart of the idea of revolution. We want to move onto something new, yet the (former) thing is still there. It is possible to conceive of this both on an individual and societal level. Thinking about the thing, the practice of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) comes to mind – the form of psychotherapy developed by Francine Shapiro that works to carefully reorder the thing (or memory of the thing) that caused the trauma. The semihypnotic side-to-side eye movement that EMDR relies on aims to answer this question of how to deal with what is inherited (and what has shaped oneself) by letting the patient reach a point of openness, a perfect passivity where reordering is possible.

–– Following in the tradition of the opera buffa, the characters in Die Perfekte Passivität experience depression, love, betrayal, breakups, and a final reunion. In between, they go through the transformation set by the drama. In our case, that is the disruption of the circular relationship between Concern, Action, Result, and Body. It is the three former that drunkenly ignore the latter, only to find out that they depend on the body as much as they do on each other. And once they realize, it is already too late.

The Body has disappeared and the other three are forced to go on a quest to find it. They get there by means of hypnosis, but alas, they find the Body changed and sick, appearing distant and incapable of bonding. As a sign of their love and

affection, Concern, Action, and Result willingly take on the transformation of the sick and become part of a new circle, now acting as Symptom, Treatment, and Diagnosis. Along with the Sick Body, they form a circle of pathology, the new chain of command.

–– The sound of a rolling suitcase is always either a stubborn “tactactactac” or the industrial sound of air sucked through a tube. But sometimes, during those beautiful moments on the moving walkway in the airport, a gentle hum materializes and a clear pitch is dispersed through the halls around the gates. It sounds like the moan of a human, shaky and everchanging, and violently interrupted when the suitcase leaves the walkway. For Die Perfekte Passivität, the surfaces of our wooden walkway (constructed by Jonas Hertig) were chosen according to their resemblance to the sound of the model airplanes, the trombone and saxophone, and the human voice. As the suitcases are always in dialogue with other elements of the piece, we rehearsed it as if it were being played inside a concert hall.

Creating balance between the parts, incorporating airplanes, suitcases, woodwinds, brass, screams and insects to create one long, hypnotic slumber.

–– Symptom, Treatment, Diagnosis, Sick Body (together) Our former purpose is abolished Our union was change Now it is recovery We lick each other’s wounds We are a circular hospital It is the mirror treatment We are a liquid carousel On a still lake ––

Die Perfekte Passivität , a composition by Mauro Hertig, premiered at Festival Rümlingen near Basel, Switzerland, in 2018. neue-musik-ruemlingen.ch maurohertig.com

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ESTIMATED READING TIME: 43m28s

The Animal House Is Closed EXTENDED OPERATIONS IIII – YNGVE HOLEN

The camera team from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is coming in an hour, so let’s see how much time we have.

Ok, an hour is probably good.

Let’s see how far we get. What do you want to discuss today?

Well, we want to see the monkeys. Is it possible to see the monkeys?

There are no experiments done today because the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is coming with a camera team.

The animal house is closed.

Closed.

Closed. Nothing to be seen.

Okay.

I can tell you it’s boring.

Boring. Okay.

All you will see is a black painted booth where the monkeys normally sit, and they sit in the plastic chair, and they watch a monitor in front of their head. They have electrodes implanted in the brain, and then there’s a plug on the surface of the skull.

They get plugged with a flexible wire, and then they sit in this chair. They have to sit in the chair because we don’t want them to have their hands free – To take the plugs off?

That’s the only reason.

They’re like us.

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So they sit there. They have buttons to press, which they can manipulate. And they look at the video monitor. We ask them to fixate on a small dot on the screen so the eyes are at rest – so that we have control over the eye movement during the whole trial. The dot appears, they fixate on the dot, and they have to remain stationary. Then we present patterns at places we preselect, places where we know the response areas of the neurons.

And what do they do?

They have several tasks, either a simple detection task, if they see a movement or a change in the pattern – just to keep their attention. Or if you want to examine detection effects, we show two patterns, so the color changes a little bit. So, for example, it’s now pink, ignore the stimulus on the left side, you have to pay attention to the one on the right. Respond to a change here, respond to a change there, and it further complicates.

Pretty boring. I wonder if humans could do it. They might need ADHD drugs.

Monkeys don’t use the internet so they don’t have ADHD. That’s true. Another task is to study memory. We show them places on the monitor, a sample on the monitor. It could be artificial, a graphic, natural images.

Then you switch them off, there’s a delay.

The monkey has to remember what they’ve seen. And then you show them a test picture, and they have to decide: Have I seen this? Is that from the samples or is it new? And it’s also how you arrange it.

The same: press button right. Different:

press button left. Or they don’t press at all and they have no chance to be rewarded.

How do you reward them?

For correct performances, they are rewarded with a few drops of fruit juice – stuff that they like. And then they work while we record activity from their brains, until they have had enough.

How long do they work?

Sometimes they work three hours, four hours, and then they stop working, and sometimes they fall asleep. We then wake them up again. But if they don’t want to, they don’t have to – we don’t force them.

So they go back into the animal colony and we revisit them two days later. That’s the procedure.

Animal colony?

That’s what we call where they live.

Where is that?

Here.

Can we see that?

Not today.

So they work for juice?

They work for fruit juice. After a while the well-trained monkeys get pleasure from just getting it right. We associate a tone with correct responses, and another one with incorrect responses. So they know beforehand if they got it right or not. So they know if they’re doing well or not. If

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they quit fixation, then the trial is aborted.

Even if you don’t give rewards, they have feedback.

You’re working with the visual system right?

I take the visual cortex as a model structure, but I could as well work in the auditory cortex, or in other parts of the cortex.

Assuming that the functions realized by this very special circuitry are generalizable. The visual cortex probably relies on the same computational algorithms with the information it gets as the auditory or tactile cortexes.

Why the visual cortex?

Because it’s well explored. Because we have experience with it. I worked a lot on development in the visual cortex.

Doing what?

What we try to solve is how this immense amount of information that we have stored in the brain on natural environments – partly genetically printed already because of evolution, partly acquired during early life, and partly also acquired throughout life with normal experience – how this extremely large body of knowledge is stored in the circuitry of the cerebral cortex, and how it is possible to access it so quickly.

You make an eye movement every 200 milliseconds, meaning that every 200 milliseconds the sensory evidence that you get changes. And you have to match this on the fly with these stored priors, and you have to pull out the right priors in order to cement the image and identify the object.

How can this be done? What is the storage space like for such a thing?

Clearly it’s not like in computers where you have it in a list or serially. Memory must be highly parallelized, you must superimpose all this information somehow, and then have rapid access to it. The hypothesis that I propose is that this can only be done if you do all these operations in a very, very high-dimensional-state space. For this you need high-dimensional dynamics, and there is a very pertinent structure in the cerebral cortex. You have nodes or columns in the network made up of cells.

And these cells have certain response properties, they are attuned to certain features – orientation, direction, motion, color, contrast, and so forth. In some of the areas the response properties of these nodes are much more complex, represent combinations of elementary features. And these nodes, columns, or classes of cells, they’re all reciprocally coupled in the visual

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cortex, as well is in all the other cortical areas – it’s the same principle. These couplings decay in an exponential fashion with distance, so not everyone talks to everyone directly. To talk to someone further away you have to do it indirectly.

And the very important feature of these connections is that they are adaptive, they can learn. They learn according to the well-known grouping-sensation rules, or feature-detecting neurons that have a high probability of co-occurring in natural environments. They have a cell that looks in the orientation here and another one, orientation here, because there is so much collinearity in the outer world – there is a lot of order in the visual world, in the world in general. What happens is that neurons code for features that tend to co-occur very often, like oriented lines that are colinear. Or same texture here, same texture there. Or coherent motion, which is also a globally coherent pattern that sequentially activates neurons that prefer the same direction of motion.

Are these regularities in the environment captured by the gestalt principles?

The gestalt psychologists have put up a whole set of principles that allow you to sort the essential evidence according to criteria of likelihood of co-occurring together, that can be bound together to form a figure to segregate from the background. So the idea we have is that… well, there’s proof that these connections learn these contingencies, they strengthen when they exist between feature detectors that are very often co-activated in a correlated way.

What does that mean?

Meaning that those features tend to co-occur very often. So these neurons look at all the features in the scene and encode for features that are worth being bound. With all likelihood they belong to the same object because in the past they have occurred together. They then form – these neurons that are preferentially coupled – they form an ad hoc ensemble of coherently active neurons that become synchronized. Much more easily than neurons that are only weakly coupled. So what you get is you have this very, very dense network of recurring connections, these reciprocal couplings between all these feature-detecting neurons that have learned in the past about the statistic regularities of the environment. This knowledge is now sitting in the functional architecture of these connections. It’s latently there, it’s not read out yet. The asymmetry in these couplings are the

latent storage of all this knowledge that you need of these priors.

What you mean is that one side is order and one side is chaos? The input is chaos?

I should first say that during spontaneous activity you have this complex – not unstructured, but very complex – highdimensional pattern of activity that evolves or emerges from this network. It’s as if all these priors, all this knowledge, were latently encoded to be called upon but it is not realized yet. It’s hovering around everything and superimposes very quickly.

And then you get sensory evidence from the visual or tactile system or whatever.

Then signals come in that match some of the in-built priors. That will drive the neurons that are preferentially coupled, and these neurons will immediately exchange their activity and become coherently active and they synchronize. And we see this is manifested in the brief oscillation in the particular frequency ranges 40 Hz, 30 Hz, gamma frequencies.

What does that do?

All of a sudden it reduces the dimensionality of this state space. There are substates that become more synchronized, less complex, more orderly, and these substates, they now represent the result of a match of the incoming sensory evidence with the already stored knowledge. And because they produce these low-dimensional synchronized soft states, they are propagated forward, and can be very easily classified. They are more consistent than what you had before.

What if you have a stimulus that has never been seen before? Something unique?

That wouldn’t have much internal structure. It will also create a substate, but it’s a substate that is much less ordered. It would cause the collapse of low-dimensionality, and it’s much more difficult to classify. This is the hypothesis we pursue. It has a little bit to do with reservoir computing or liquid computing. Echo-state computing – Is that like neuromorphic computing?

In a sense, it is of course neuromorphic, because you’re adding neurons to it. It’s quite different from what you now read a lot about these deep learning networks that do packet classification. All these recurrent connections, they are simply feetforward connections, many layers. They are good in classifying feature constellations, but they do not extract semantically meaningful objects, let alone relations between objects. They just classify a bunch of features. So it’s a very different principle. You find recall networks all over

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in the brain, in all cortical structures. You also find them in the hippocampus. You don’t find them in other structures. They are an acute invention of evolution.

Why did it evolve?

Because recurrence allows you to create these very high-dimensional dynamic states. You can imagine if element A talks to B and B talks to C and C talks back to B and to A. If you have millions of those you get a very complex pattern that produces the high-dimensionality of these states. You can’t intuitively imagine them. Some people say the dimensionality of this system is infinite. You can’t really imagine what it is. Nor can you get a good intuitive grasp of the dynamics. We talk about time being the fourth dimension.

Here we’re talking about very, very, very many dimensions. It’s quite curious that you have a machine in your head that does all the stuff you know it does and you have no good intuition for the mechanisms that are underlying it.

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painting is finished. But you must have internal criteria to make that judgement, and it’s also based on a concept. Where that concept comes from is unknown. We don’t know much about that.

I first read your work in the context of the debate about free will, more than 10 years ago. It was a big topic. We were reading an old manifesto today from 2004, discussing how we know a lot about brain regions, and that we can also study small things, neurons, but what’s happening in between is completely unknown. Is this still the case?

I think the bottom line is that we have accumulated an enormous amount of new data using new technologies, but conceptually we haven’t advanced that much. We are at the turn of the moment of what we consider 20th-century neuroscience and 21st-century neuroscience – the difference being that 20th-century neuroscience was still more in the framework of cybernetics.

What role do concepts play in this?

What do you mean cybernetics?

Basic. If you had no concept in mind, no working hypothesis, you would just collect data and you wouldn’t know what to do with it. The space that you can explore is really infinite, recording the activity of all those neurons. If you wouldn’t have a hypothesis, or at least an intuition or what is likely the case, you wouldn’t know what to look for. So usually this type of research is hypothesis-driven.

It was more in the framework of serial operations in the hierarchical system, that is input-driven, does something, then there’s an output. While now we see the brain much more as a very complex, self-organizing system of nonlinear dynamics, that is generative, that produces hypotheses, questions, all the time.

But what is a concept?

Only a fraction of the synaptic activity in the cerebral cortex are made by input from the periphery. All the rest – 90 percent – comes from within. It is a constructive system that takes signals from the environment to confirm hypotheses rather than waiting until something happens outside and then making sense out of it. We are very convinced that perception – the way we perceive the world – is a construction that follows results from prior knowledge, from our expectancies, and from a lot of implicit, covert knowledge that we have no control of. The brain computes stuff on the basis of sensory evidence and presents this as an experience. But very often we don’t even know how it came to that conclusion.

A concept?

An idea. How does it emerge?

It’s part of our ability to reason. I guess what you have to do is encode content at a certain level of abstraction so that you can establish semantic relations among the different elements of this content, following logic and principles in general.

And trying to arrive at a coherent picture or interpretation of facts that you are aware of. That’s usually what we address as a concept. It should be free of contradictions and it should have explanatory value.

But how do we form this in the brain?

We have no idea. It’s probably closely related, in humans at least, since we are speaking animals, to the organization of language in our brains. But you don’t have to have these logical rules to develop a concept that allows you to say: this

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It talks mainly to itself?

Making the question of free will – I think neuroscience supports constructivist philosophical stances. The free will question, in my eyes, is a trivial one. If you believe that… unless you take a dualistic stance, and you really think about the

world of consciousness and psyche and spirituality being an ontological entity apart. And then you have the material world on the other side, and the two in some mysterious way interact. Unless you defend this position, you have to assume the naturalist position that all the mental functions, including our consciousness, our feelings, et cetera are the result of neuronal interactions. If this is true, then what you do, what you decide, what you feel, what you see, must follow the laws that govern the activity in the brain. And these are the laws of nature. So causality is an important principle and obviously acts there as well. How you decide can only depend on the way your brain works, plus a little bit of serendipity, some noise.

A dice sometimes falls to the right, and sometimes falls to the left.

But that doesn’t set you free.

It just makes you dependent on hazards rather than laws. It doesn’t help much. I think it’s trivial. This whole debate only got heated because people came to the wrong conclusion, which they read out of the papers. I never said this. If you are not free, in the sense that you could have done anything else, but you just did this and this was the reason, this was your free will decision, I would say, the reason for this was because the brain has a history, and it behaves according to this history, even though you may not be aware of everything that may determine such an outcome.

So if you are not free in the sense that, you could have done anything, but just did this, then you cannot be responsible for what you do.

This is of course nonsense. You are the author. Who else? It’s you. So you are responsible, which implies that society must have the right to tell you: look, what you did here is not admissible. We don’t allow you to do that. It’s what we do with our children, even though here we think they are not free, because we don’t think they are mature enough to have free will.

We punish them or reward them, so I think this whole debate was the media. The hype comes and goes.

But it triggers a lot of discussion on the level of law. Some people believe that neuroscience shows that the criminal justice system makes no sense.

But we don’t know enough about the brain to abolish it. If you find a cause for an inappropriate behavior that’s neurobiologically linked, using X-rays, MRIs, whatever, like

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a jury, you would send the person who produced that inappropriate behavior to the clinic. If you can’t find a cause, because your measuring instruments aren’t appropriate, then that person goes to jail. This is an interesting thing. Neurobiologists would say you always have a neuronal cause for a misbehavior. It may not be a tumor but the brain could be misfiring – there are many reasons you behave in certain ways for which you cannot see a cause from outside. So detectability of abnormalities becomes the criteria to decide whether to send someone to the clinic or to jail. And this is a point that needs to be discussed, that has been discussed, that is discussed.

Do you believe that there will be a fundamental shift in how we treat abnormal behaviors with the more data and knowledge we have about how the brain works?

Whether we can discover the causes let alone treat the abnormalities is the question. We know the causes of Alzheimer’s but we don’t know how to treat it. But yeah, maybe in the long run. I think education is an important treatment. You can change the architecture of the brain through education, that is, through experience. The brain develops until you’re 25.

And then?

Well, the process until you’re 25 is still developmental. You have new connections formed and existing connections retracted, depending on the use. You wire together what fires together. You use correlations.

And this brings you to the adult architecture. And then you have what you have, and you have to live with it. All you can do is you can still modify the connections, the efficiency of the connections.

So you can’t make a new connection and you can’t destroy one that is already there, a disturbing one, for example?

You can only increase or decrease the efficiency by changing the synaptic gain, which is learning. You can learn to control strange behavior that you have because of genetic wiring.

You can learn to suppress it. And this plateau phase lasts until about age, probably my age, 70 or 75 or so. And then even under very normal conditions, you notice a loss of connections, a loss of synaptic connections, ultimately also a moderate loss of cells, cell number.

And then, yeah, you become cognitively impaired. You become slower, less sharp, maybe wiser, because you don’t care too much about details anymore.

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What are the possibilities of shocking the brain into reconfiguring itself? Or even slow massive shifts in brain function, like those you’ve discussed with the Buddhist monk Mathieu Ricard?

We don’t know very well. If you practice a lot of meditative routines you get to know yourself better, and that allows you to perceive the world at a greater distance.

You have a more objective view of the world, what perception is. If you’ve seen your internal mirror, if you wipe clean your internal stream, because you get to know yourself well, then your picture of the world becomes more realistic. And that alleviates suffering, and you become a better person. This is what Mathieu would say. To what extent this works or not – What about too much meditation? Can that make you crazy?

I have a daughter who does real research on this. The outcome is… there is evidence… it does produce a change. To which extent this is lasting beyond the practice, I wouldn’t know. I myself did one of these crash courses in Zen meditation for a fortnight, eight hours in front of a white wall. Counting from one to 10. It did change something. I got to know a part of myself that I didn’t know before, that I can reactivate now when I sit and be quiet.

It certainly did something. We also know from trauma research and from cathartic events in life that they can shock you to an extent that you are no longer the same afterwards. What that entails in terms of mechanisms I don’t know. We start to know a little bit about the consequences of prolonged stress on brain functions.

And of course, a changed resilience to stress changes your behavior. But to which extent you can change the character of a personality is not known. With adult brains, through meditation, it is said that you can clean your consciousness to an extent that it becomes a reliable reflector of reality.

Ultimately this would entail that there can be a conscious state without content – that you just clean, clean, clean, and then you have it, and it can just come in – I don’t know if that’s possible.

Can’t realizing emptiness or whatever lead to psychosis? Like all forms of isolation?

It’s a research question, but so far we have no empirical approach to answer it.

How much Western scientific examination is done on these states of mind? Can you scan a monk’s brain with an fMRI? This has been done. Rich Davidson in

Wisconsin has done quite a lot on that.

Other groups have taken well-experienced meditators and put them into the tube or used EEG to scan them. You’ll see that if you train or practice meditation it requires a lot of cognitive control, engages your attention systems because you have to repress mind wandering, you have to learn to focus, or you have to learn to widen your focus of intention but not let intrusions come. You need certain centers in the brain to do that, and they light up when you do this practice. There’s also evidence that certain cortical structures increase in thickness, namely those that are part of the attention network.

What do you think of rebooting the plasticity in adult brains to behave more like children’s brains? Like, chemically?

That’s what everybody would hope for, especially after injury.

What about technology improving to allow us to observe our own brains more regularly and in more detail? Like fMRI machines in our phones or something?

Do you think spatiotemporal resolution will improve so much in the near future?

Well, you can’t carry around an fMRI machine in your pocket, you need a 3-Tesla magnet. You can do EG, very lousy spatio-resolution, because you have all this volume production. You can plant electro chips. You do this with paralyzed people for them to control a robot arm, for example. I am more on the skeptical side.

Why? First of all, we have not understood the essential principles of the brain. Silicon Valley people produce these good-looking machines and neural networks, and they have fantastic performances in classification, but that’s it. Playing Go is nothing more than that. You just have to learn from examples. If you have enough time and enough speed, you iterate these trial and error things until you get a strategy that’s super good. So they outperform us on particular tasks. My phone outperforms me when I do a numerical calculation. Let them do it. It’s fine. Nice servants. I come from a time when I still used the ruler to calculate logarithmic numbers or tables.

So these tasks are abstractions of biological processes?

Abstractions, approximations, guess work. We don’t really understand how the cerebral cortex does what it does – and it only takes 30 watts of energy. Compare

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that with what computers use, it’s like a city in order to do the calculations that we can do in our heads. We have much to learn from it. They will have to learn from us as soon as we understand more and then try to implement those principles in… probably not silicon. My guess is that it will have to be another substrate, because much of this stuff is analog computing, and this you can’t do well in silicon. So far they have no technical implementation of a clever learning rule. It all has to be calculated, embodied in a chip. So I’m very relaxed. And I know I’m in good company, because everyone who doesn’t make big money with machines but who instead try to really get at the essence of what generative computing means, they share my skepticism.

We’ve encountered a lot of optimism in tech. Do you think they’ll catch up to your skepticism?

Certain computer people, those who really made the advances on the theoretical level before all the limitations came, now detect and realize that they get the same problems we have: it’s the binding problem, the question of how you represent message relations, how you get a representation of a leaf on a branch from a tree in an environment. You have these many brackets, and in language construction you have the same thing. The way Google Translate does it is it compares the world literature in the original language in the input with world literature in translations in the output. And they match it until it fits, but this is not how we do it. We try to get the meaning, we search the right vocabulary, it’s a completely different science.

And we call these functions generative functions. These machines cannot do it because they lack essential features of organization that we have. But unfortunately these are features that engineers hate. They hate the recurrent network.

Why? Because it’s not controllable. You cannot analytically analyze it, not mathematically either because it’s too complex. It’s too nonlinear so you can’t really predict what it’s going to do. So it has this runaway kinetics that must be very well controlled or else it gets epileptic or it dies out. And all these problems make them find other solutions.

You could argue that airplanes don’t flap their wings like birds.

But this is aerodynamics. The cognitive principles used by the brain, in my opinion,

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are still in some respects radically different from those used nowadays in supercomputers. It will take quite some time until we have done our job, and we can build little machines that only consume 30 watts, and start to behave a little bit like a fly. If you look at a mosquito, and the intelligence of this mosquito – I’m sure you’ve tried to catch one at night – you start to admire these little machines: there’s nothing in the artificial world that can approximate this in terms of energy efficiency and cuteness.

What are the challenges in the next ten years in neuroscience?

Cope with the dynamic s and the complexity. We now have the tools, and this is really new in the field. Until we could look at more than one node of a network at the same time, people used to observe one node in different stages of the brain, one after the other. This precludes you from seeing relational constructs. You cannot clap with one hand. As soon as you start with this, you see relations, and you start to see what looks like noise, because A is always doing this and B is doing something else. As soon as you see that these two things are related, it’s no longer noise. The more of these nodes you record simultaneously, the more you see that everything is coordinated with everything in a very subtle way.

So if you look at a single place it looks like noise, but if you look at many places it looks like a pattern?

We can finally do this. With modern technologies, optimal recording, we can look at thousands of nodes at the same time.

We get this extremely high-dimensional data, you can’t see anything when you look at it, it’s just dots and curves – you can’t make any sense out of it. So you need machines in order to detect patterns in there – machine learning – and you need mathematics to cope with these complex, high-dimensional vectors. It’s not only vectors, it’s trajectories, and the trajectory of vectors, because activity changes in time all the time. It must, and only because it does do we have a concept of time flowing. If it always stayed the same, time wouldn’t move.

It’s like we need new mathematics.

Yes. We need much more conceptual work to make sense out of the data. We can collect it much better than interpret it. New technologies have opened the field up.

We are able to record from thousands of neurons at the same time, we have anatomical methods to see the whole network.

You could eventually really trace it, but that doesn’t really help you. What you see is complexity and very high-dimension dynamics. And somehow this goes well together. A complex system will develop such dynamics. The real problem now is what to do with all these facts – how to put them together, what sort of concepts do they develop, how to test them, how to make good predictions for further research, because obviously there’s no point in just collecting whatever you get, as we said initially. You never know if what you have is a side effect not worth pursuing or if it’s the real thing. Before you have a concept you don’t know.

It’s like the more we are able to observe the more we know how little we know.

This is exactly what my feeling is. 20 years ago, I thought I had understood more than I now know I understand today. There is a lot of progress but the insight into not knowing has grown more rapidly than the insight into knowing has.

What about neurological diseases? Do you have any insights into slowing the ageing brain?

There are different aspects. Obviously with degenerative diseases we get more and more of a handle on the mechanisms, as well as the genetic causes. Therapy is a big problem. It’s not easy to interfere with these processes. We know roughly what’s going on but we are not yet able to stop it. That may change rapidly with technology, since we can really hunt down genes and manipulate gene expression, but we aren’t there yet. But I do think that we will have a cure for certain degenerative diseases, whether it’s Alzheimer’s I’m not sure. Maybe Parkinson’s. ALS is about to be solvable – at least in the near future.

And what about psychiatry?

It’s very different, because there we don’t understand what the problem is, where it resides. All we know now – and we have a number of conferences on it, the Ernst Strüngmann Conferences, which used to be in Dahlem. We had three or four on psychiatric diseases. The bottom line is the taxonomy, the diagnosis, is very coarse. What we call schizophrenia probably has a very different result, a very different mechanism to something else we call schizophrenia. It’s probably very different diseases, and the same with autism and so forth. So we need a better classification and taxonomy of it before we can do systematic research. We have certain hyimpotheses of what’s going

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wrong but if you look at all of them, they are not coherent yet. This is partly a reflection that we don’t understand very basic principles of cortical functions supporting higher cognitive functions.

Does that also mean that there’s no progress pharmacologically?

Very little. All the drugs that we have nowadays were serendipitously discovered 50 years ago, with added modifications to alleviate certain side effects.

There’s no new principle so far. Lithium for depression. So the field is failing, and the field is searching for solutions, and the field doesn’t quite know where they will come from. It’s a big problem. We are helpless here.

What does lithium do for depression? I just watched Homeland recently, and Carrie’s prescribed lithium – It acts like sodium in the brain, in terms of binding, but it works in some patients because it changes excitability levels.

But we haven’t really come to grips with it. Deep brain stimulation has also been developed.

For Parkinson’s?

We don’t know how it works exactly for Parkinson’s. It’s been examined in animal experimentation, and there’s a good concept behind it, and people have realized that when they got it wrong, when they stimulated places that they didn’t want to stimulate, that it had effects on mood. So there was this revival of psychosurgery, which we had already condemned 50 years ago.

Is it bad for the brain?

Stimulation is thought to be reversible, but I doubt it, because if you stimulate the brain over weeks and weeks, it must change something. It’s an active field, trial and error, ethically questionable sometimes, because these interventions, unlike prescribing a drug, are not subject to the same ethical criteria as drug development.

So the FDA is something we should hold on to?

They require endless trials, double-blind and so forth, before treatments are approved. With deep brain stimulation it is enough, because it is a method, if the patient and the psychiatrist agree that they should have an intervention. If they find a neurosurgeon to do it, they can do it. They don’t have to ask an ethical

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committee and so forth. And of course money is involved. It started in patients that are so-called helpless, who can’t be helped pharmacologically. So desperate cases, who consent because they see it as the last resort. And if you look at what they do, they try here and they try there, and stimulate here and stimulate there. I was directing the Academy of Sciences for a while, asked to analyze the situation, stop it, and do what you have to do on ethical committees. You have to be there for a longterm examination of the development of these patients, follow them for a long time, and do it in a systematic way, and publish, and also publish negative findings.

I hope that this will stop this hazardous, aleatoric playing around with brains.

We were in touch with DARPA-associated institutions – the Lawrence Livermore Institute in San Francisco. They’re implanting these chips – electronic devices – in the brain, with the hope of being able to sort of control them remotely. It’s not there yet, but proof of concept is. But for Parkinson’s it seems to work.

There’s something to it. I can imagine that certain forms of major depression can be treated that way. By stimulating the reward centers in the brain. But so far there is no canonical recipe.

We did transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Ah yeah. We have these machines here.

The idea is that early artforms made by prehistoric humans – from the north and the south – resemble each other because trance states activate the visual cortex in the same way that TMS does. It sounds dangerous when you talk about it.

No, TMS is not dangerous. Maybe it can trigger epilepsy.

He just triggered it a little above the neck.

Ah, great opportunity for art. I’ve been to several symposia recently on the chances of using virtual reality and augmented reality to embed the observer much more in the piece of art. Because it can really absorb you completely, which looking at a painting can’t as much. I know Daniel Birnbaum, the former director of the Städelschule.

Yeah, I studied there. He taught a philosophy seminar.

Ah, I know him well. He is moving now from the modern art museum in Stockholm to a company that does virtual reality, because he wants to make this technique available to artists. It’s certainly something that one should keep in mind. Cinema started to outperform theater to some extent. This will certainly replace the current video monitors in exhibitions.

In terms of simulating experiences, it can also work much better with emotions like empathy.

Yeah, yeah. Because you can fool the brain if you simulate the sensory evidence.

You can also take a flight simulator at the airport. They have all the noise and the vibrations.

There you can really embed it. I saw these pilots sweating. There were sitting in a simulator, and they really felt they had to do it right. So you forget very quickly that you are in a simulator.

We saw Star Wars in 4DX. The seat was rattling, and there was a plastic tube that tickled your legs, and water was squirted in your face. I put my jacket on, it was freezing.

VR becomes reality again. It capitalizes on the knowledge that the brain has about the world. You give it a few things to eat and it will reconstruct the rest.

You see phosphenes. You’d have to bring it higher up in the cortical area, and all of a sudden you’d see faces appearing.

Imagery. The question is why do we draw stick figures all the time? This might be a genetic imprint. Because the body scheme is so similar in all mammals. A head, a trunk, and four paws. Either you could take the stance that it’s a very high degree of abstraction, or it is the most primitive representation of a mammal.

That’s always the discussion, right?

What do you think?

I think it’s both.

What do you think about virtual reality?

© Yngve Holen 2019. ETOPS IIII, edited by Yngve Holen and Mathew Evans.

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OF COURSE NO ONE PAYS AMAZONAS FOR PROVIDING THAT FUNCTION EXTENDED OPERATIONS III – YNGVE HOLEN What do you want to know?

How did you end up here?

I was invited to, uh… I was given the job 36 years ago. And I’ve been working with INPA ever since.

We spoke with your colleague, Charles.

Uh huh.

And we’re in touch with Susanna .

Something we had discussed with them are the challenges of biodiversity. How to manage these unknown quantities, put value on something we don’t know much about. How do you fund biodiversity management?

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Well, from my end we have almost no money. Brazil’s in a crisis. But before Brazil was in a crisis we had very little money.

We did a calculation and it came out to be something like 1 cent per hectare per year. It’s almost 1/100th of a cent per hectare per year for the most of the Amazon. People have trouble because they can’t comprehend how big the Amazon is, and just how few researches there are, and little access there is to it.

People often think of a 1-million-dollar project, which is an awful lot of money for most studies people do in the US or Europe, where you’re talking about a couple of square kilometers, and there’s easy access to get there by road or trail.

But here, when you spread that over 7 million square kilometers, it’s very little.

That’s our biggest problem—the scale of the area. Things can happen that you don’t know happen, because you’re not there.

And local people don’t have the education.

They have the laws, lots of things to back them up, but they don’t know their rights.

So they tend to get walked over by big business and corporations in the Amazon.

And it’s hard to control that business, because of limited monitoring possibilities.

You don’t know who accesses what, and what they do with that.

It’s still easy… well, it’s not easy. There are a lot of people in the Amazon. So if we could get that work force organized, then they would do a lot of protecting themselves. But at the moment they aren’t

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thinking about that. They’re thinking about high technology themes. Thinking about going in and finding that leaf that will cure cancer. And very few people are thinking about the Amazon as a productive system, and that there are lots of people living off it. And other things like world climate are so popular.

What many people across the world consider the project of saving the Amazon has actually very little to do with the people who live here.

People think that there’s almost nobody in the Amazon, but there are millions of people here. And the sorts of agriculture they had done up until now had sustained them, and had sustained the ecosystem.

If you replace that with large-scale monoculture and the amounts that the ecosystem has to process, you lose the people, and you usually don’t make a lot of money either. There are a whole lot of perks and strange business deals that go on. A few people make a lot of money. But for the area, there’s very little production.

There’s all these factories here in Manaus.

We’ve been here for about 5 days.

Electronics factories, automobile factories. We see them everywhere. How do you look at Manaus as a city that’s integrated in the rainforest, that works with it?

In a way it does. Manaus generates a lot of money. And that money can be used to sustain people and for education and all sorts of things. And Manaus effects a very small area in terms of the forest, because it makes little demands on the forest. It’s sort of a little enclave. There’s virtually no hinterland around Manaus. No agricultural production. Most things are flown in.

The Free Zone—the original idea was put in by the military government. In order to attract a lot of people to the Amazon, they would cut down the trees. And the military also thought that communists wouldn’t be able to hide in the grass then either, so they would solve their problems. They wanted to get rid of the jungle. It didn’t work that way. But what it basically did was make an enclave that generates a lot of money, which is good in general. The State of Amazonas is one of the most preserved states within the Amazon. But it’s also one of the richest states. That’s because it’s living on a Free Zone. And so there’s all sorts of opportunities for high technology, and there’s also more opportunities for education and healthcare. Other states like Pará and Rondônia and Acre, they don’t have those benefits, so people try to make money by cutting down forest and putting in cows, soybean, and other things. I’m not against the Free Zone for very large reasons.

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The Amazon stretches across 6 countries.

And those countries all don’t have the same political or ecological agenda. There are also European and Asian countries coming in, interested in the hydropower possibilities, for example. What kind of environmental scope does scientific research have in and of itself with what you do?

One of our biggest projects at the moment is to do an environmental evaluation of all the sites where hydroelectric dams are planned. At the moment, the government requires an environmental impact statement. The problem is that they’re already putting in the dam when they’re doing the environmental impact statement. And it costs lots of money to take away the dam.

So what we have to do is go in when they’re planning the dam, because they plan these dams 20 or 30 years before. So if we can go in and evaluate the biodiversity in one of these places, we might be able to determine the potential—the money potential—for the area, or the potential loss if the dam is built. And then the idea is to try to optimize, to get as much energy for the least loss of biodiversity. We have to do the surveys now, and that’s what we can’t get money to do. If we invest now, we save money later.

But there are a lot of vested interests in not planning, and there are even vested interests by the biologists, because a lot of biologists get rich doing these statements that are used for nothing. So one of our biggest projects at the moment is to do the integration of environmental planning and biodiversity. But another big problem is in countries that supply the water to the Amazon. They’re putting in an enormous number of hydroelectric dams, and we have very little influence there. Though we are starting some training programs with countries like Ecuador, so we can influence what goes on in those other countries. But it’s much harder.

Yngve’s from Norway. And we know that Norway invested 100 million euros or something into saving the rainforest.

We also heard quite a lot of joking around about what’s happening with that money.

Charles said that he went down to Brasilia to this meeting where there were… people were brainstorming about how to use the money. And he said if you’re going to save the rainforest, why don’t you just build a fence around it, with guards? Why invest in a bio pepper seed?

Why invest heavily in the extraction economy? Why not just put a fence up?

I talked to the Norway people, but they were really interested in investing in carbon. And carbon trading. And that’s a good example

of the size of the problem we have. So they have all the money, but they may spread it around so thinly that they end up not being able to do anything. Because what you have to do is integrated planning for the whole of the basin. And they end up forking out bits of money here and there, to this and that, and although it might be very useful from the point of view of a normal academic program, it’s not… What we need is a lot of planning over the whole of the basin. And it has to be integrated.

And what about this fence?

I think that they’re not against… they want to work with the people, give them other opportunities to make money. It’s just, as we don’t have a good plan for the whole of the Amazon, we don’t know where it’s best to invest. So people have been putting lots of money into the Amazon for quite a long time now, in terms of billions of dollars. But it just seems to disappear. It’s not going into a system that builds for the long-term. So I don’t know how this Norway money will finally come out, but we certainly haven’t seen any of it.

There seems to be a lot of unknown aspects of the Amazon.

Yeah, that’s the thing. There’s a movement within the biodiversity section of the Ministry of Science and Technology that’s trying to be more efficient in that way. But that movement came just at the time when Brazil went into a crisis. When we had a little bit of money, there was no planning, but now that there’s no money, we’re getting around to the planning.

How do the Amazonian people feel about monoculture?

You see, there’s very little organization and there’s no communication. So people then see it. These things just eat away the Amazon, and those local ideas and knowledge. These people are all very poor, need money, and they don’t have very much employment. So cutting down the forest looks good to them for a while. And then they find that when monoculture goes in, there’s no more forest. They can’t live there anymore, so they might go to the periphery of the city and become city dwellers.

People don’t see it happening. It just sort of creeps up on them.

So there’s no real economic alternative to chopping down the rainforest?

It’s not going to happen, because we’ve got a lot of poor people out there, and they’re worried about the health of their kids and better conditions. And the only

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way they see they can do that is to have tire roads and cell phones. And they don’t see what’s happening. It just keeps nibbling away. The only place that you sort of have grassroots resistance is way back when they tried to go into the rubber cutters and take them over, and cutters refused people from going in.

Chico Mendes, in the 80s.

Yeah, but that’s 30 years ago. That sort of thing is not happening now at all really.

We’ve been hearing that they’re trying to create more economy through extraction products. Brazil nut, açai.

Well that was… The idea then and now is that the people would have standing forest products. And basically they’ve never had the support. They’ve never had the government doing those tests in those production systems. Because it’s very different to invest in a lot of very small-scale farms, which produce a small amount each. You have to have an organization to get that going. Each person working individually doesn’t work. You could say the same thing about Europe. You could say the small farms in Europe, they’re trying to keep them going in Europe, but in order to do that they have to have some sort of government intervention. And here it’s even more difficult. And so the Sustainable Development Reserve in the other reserves, the people don’t have the lifestyle, the basic education and health requirements, and it’s really hard to make that work in the long term.

We spoke with a chef who has this restaurant in São Paulo. A fancy restaurant.

It also has this social-ecological branch, called ATA. And they help the Baniwa produce this really delicious pepper in the Northwest.

Aesthetic industries are never going to be efficient enough to justify the fate of the Amazon. Basically, the Amazon does provide all of the water to all the agricultural growing regions of the southern part of Brazil, and there’s all these carbon things.

The world wants the Amazon standing, so the Brazilian government wants the Amazon standing. But they don’t want to invest the very small amount that’s necessary to make the lives of the local people better. So the local people don’t see any alternatives except cutting down the forest. So what’s really needed is strong government planning to maintain the forest. The state of Acre even subsidizes the rubber, because it’s better to subsidize the rubber than have people cut

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down the forest. But we don’t have that on a larger scale. We need it, but we’re not going to get it. Instead of people saying, we’re going to open up new roads into the Amazon, make new places to get more money… what we need is for the government to consolidate the places where there are people, consolidate the infrastructure, consolidate the health and education. And that wouldn’t take that much money, instead of wasting money making new roads. You can see the same sort of thing in the south of Brazil. 40 percent of Brazil’s agricultural production is just wasted. It never actually gets to the table, because of the very bad infrastructure.

They’re always trying to start something new instead of investing in consolidating infrastructure that’s already there.

Maybe some kind of longterm partnership with an outside investor? One of the energy partnerships? Or is that asking too much?

There is big hydroelectric potential in the Amazon, and there’s no way that people aren’t going to use it. It’s just to use it sensibly. They put in Belo Monte, but in a few years there won’t be enough water to run it. And so they’re going to say, we’ve invested all these billions, and the problem is the Indians who won’t let us put the other dams upstream. They won’t let the water flow into it. And then they’ll want to go into the Kayapo lands and destroy those. And this frontier mentality… Instead of saying yes, you’re not going to be able to preserve the whole Amazon. People are going to want it, and they’re going want to use it in new ways. But we should go carefully, consolidating. And part of that consolidation is the products, the small agriculture, the standing crops, the tree crops. And putting it in the system so they function, instead of trying to expand. We have to get rid of the frontier mentality. That’s the problem.

So what is the Amazon if it’s not a frontier.

If we think about it globally?

Firstly it’s a mitigation system. It stores 1/4 of the total carbon.

Hence the carbon trading.

Well, yeah. To not get too complicated… we’ve been discussing dams. The Amazon is a giant water pump. Basically, the northeastern trade winds, as they go past, they collect water vapor. And that brings water to Latin America. The rain falls in Uruguay, Paraguay, the plains of the basin.

Argentina. Mato Grosso. All these areas that are the grainery of Latin America.

These agricultural economies are worth something like 1 trillion dollars. Of course getting rain to those regions is necessary for those economies to function. Of course no one pays Amazonas for providing that function. And that of course is a problem we have globally of not recognizing public goods and services.

It’s also the North-South issue.

Globally, yes.

Nice caiman head. And that crocodile over there. Where does your fascination come from? Are you from Australia?

Yes. Because we went to the floating forest, near Tefé. And we saw caimans for the first time and they were terrifying creatures. What’s attractive about them?

Everyone’s attracted to seemingly terrifying animals. Tigers, elephants. There are all sorts of things that are terrifying.

But I don’t know. I had an opportunity to work with them when I was in Australia.

Caimans—like this one—are pussycats compared to crocodylidae. If you were up

by Tefé, you saw these caimans that were up there floating around the lodge. But if they were crocodiles, they would eat people. It’s very different. So I just… there was a time when it seemed like it would be a good opportunity for local people to hunt caiman. They’ve always hunted caiman. They’ve always eaten caiman.

Not so much in the State of Amazonas, but they export it to the State of Pará.

For a long time they sold the skin to the luxury industry, and it seemed like for a long time that it would be a good industry for the people. But they’ve run into all sorts of problems, mainly from the agricultural industry, which wants us to kill them like cows. Take them to a slaughter house, and hang them up. But that doesn’t work for a wild animal. Although it does work for some wild animals, but not for these. They just become inedible if you do that. It’s the only country in the world that requires that.

All the other countries in the world—like Australia, the US—where they hunt crocodilians, they treat them like fish. So there’s a big opportunity for the local people to have… to make money out of these caimans, but we’re not making much use of it yet.

You can make more money from the skin than the meat probably.

Both. The skin has a reasonable value, but it’s the meat that makes it worthwhile. If

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you can’t sell the meat, it’s not worthwhile to hunt. It’s also ethical, to go out there and kill a big animal like that. Just taking the skin and throwing the meat in the water.

They have an amphibious style.

Well, yeah, in the sense that it lives in the water and it nests on land. It can walk on land. They’re not amphibians. They’re pretty interesting animals. The can do all sorts of things. They have the most complex vertebrate heart. They can do all sorts of things that birds and mammals can do, and they can do all sorts of things that amphibians can do. They can swim like a fish, gallop like a horse. Their eyesight is much better than ours. They see well at night, in black and white. They also can see more colors than us. They have color vision like birds.

So a crocodile looking through our eyes would think that he’s color blind. They do all sorts of amazing things. They’re special creatures. And they’ve been around a long time. They used to feed on dinosaurs, and they’re still feeding on us, and they’ll still be feeding on whatever dominant group there is on the earth 50 million years from now.

I read somewhere that the crocodile was around when the mammal was still extremely small. It hadn’t evolved into a large order.

Mammals were pretty small back then, skidding around. They didn’t take off until the dinosaurs died out. Though all of the archazoes died out at the end of the Jurassic Period, except for the crocodilians and the birds. And the birds are dinosaurs. They’re just dinosaurs. But all of the other dinosaurs died out. Only the crocs and birds survived.

Is there any explanation?

Nobody really knows. There are a whole lot of freshwater things that survived. Possibly because things that live in freshwater, they can feed on dead things that fall into the water. They think that basically a meteorite hit the earth, and cut out all the sunlight for years. So there were no green plants producing anything. And so the animals eating the green plants died out. How the birds did it, with their high metabolic rate, nobody knows. But perhaps they were able to migrate to find the little bits of food that were left.

Felipe told us to be in touch with you. Do you have any relationship to his restaurant? I know that INPA and the restaurant are trying to work together. Do you have a food passion?

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I coordinate a very large project called CENBAM. It’s the National Institute for Science Technology and Innovation for Amazonian Biodiversity. And one of our researches is Noemia Ishikawa. And Noemia studies the fungi. And she’s interested in that. She’s descended from Japanese immigrants. And she had a lot to do with—I think it was her grandfather who started growing shiitake in Brazil. And so when she came here, she’s been trying to promote the use of the Lentinus strigosus species. She just spent some time in Roraima, with the Indians up there. The Yanomami. And they have dozens and dozens of species of mushrooms that they eat. So it looks like it could be an industry. Either an extracting industry for the Indians, or an opportunity to grow them. Noemia’s been working with the people who have the brazil nut plantations, and they have to cut off the excess branches from the brazil nuts, and they use those excess branches to grow shiitake. With all of that, it ’s no good having production unless you can sell it. So people like Felipe have been helping out by looking at what the economic potential of those things could be, because you need a whole production chain. It’s not enough to just go there, and say, someone can grow it, someone can harvest it, and someone can sell it. You have to make sure you have a whole system that will keep going and be consistent. So that’s why we work with Felipe.

What kinds of technologies are used to map biodiversity?

Well, there’s been some advancement.

And people of course are looking into ways to better map species. Mosquitos, for example. Which are very dangerous, and very expensive to get rid of.

Didn’t the Americans kill them off with gasoline when they were building the Panama Canal? Just drenched the whole landscape with gas.

They’re still trying to commit specicide on around 30 different kinds of mosquitos worldwide. But there’s thousands of different species of mosquitoes, and if we get rid of a few, the landscapes will hiccup, and who knows if something better or worse will then emerge. We’re still a long way away from knowing the extent and complex behavior of these ecosystems.

now test sleep patterns more generally.

Nature doesn’t use the same apps as us.

People are really interested in these things.

Things like the food and the small industries and what not. We do work with that.

But it’s not going to make a big difference over the whole of the Amazon. The mosquito technology is useful immediately, but that’s a whole other story. Our technology is about environmental impact statements, and how you can do biodiversity surveying, and put it into a system where you can do conservation planning. So the system that we developed is on biodiversity monitoring. That system, the repel system, is used as a basic-impact evaluation system for dams. It’s used by Obama. We work both with the federal government and the private sector. We do a lot of training. We’re developing that. Each one of these little industries that comes up is really interesting, and everyone likes to do it. If you can stand there and hold out: I’ve developed this tomato. It’s something that’s palpable.

But it’s harder to get people interested in long-term planning. Because nobody sees it. If you plan well, everyone expects what you should have done. If you plan badly, everyone complains. If you do it well, everyone thinks it’s normal. That’s our main line of attackget people planning between the various sectors, like mining, the energy sector, the transport sector. So that we can integrate that with biodiversity.

How is the political sphere responding to this?

Surprisingly well, but slowly. There’s not much money. That’s the whole problem. As we were starting to get there, the money dried up. There’s often resistance from places you wouldn’t expect. Like from biologists, who have been used to doing their own little research and not having to interact with anybody, and they publish it in some journal, and it has very little impact. So it’s really changing culture. And scientific culture is very entrenched. We actually have… it’s not more difficult to work with politicians than it is to work with the biologists.

What about smartphones? Bird apps?

Those are being developed too. [Laughs] Is it like sleep? With all these apps we can

© Yngve Holen 2015. ETOPS III, edited by Yngve Holen and Mathew Evans.

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CAPRICORN

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The feeling of mastery.

The keys underhand.

dancer. The moment when you nail it. What if it

The end

brings you the most joy possible? What if you touch god but that also means

zone zone dance. dance. Serena’s Serena’s crip crip

your your death? death? The The higher higher you you soar, soar, the the more more you you are are punished. punished. Challenged.

Challenged.

walk. walk. The The swan swan

song song of of aa ballet ballet

Attacked.

Attacked. Persecuted.

Persecuted. Shamed.

Shamed.

The closer you get to the real thing, the stronger the pull of the opposite force becomes.

It feels like they are trying to kill you. Like they (white people, men, etc.) actually want you dead.

They want to take you out at the fucking knees.

YES YOU HURT ME. I thought you were my fucking friend.

“It explores the utopian longings and the promise promise “It explores the utopian longings and the that resided resided in in waywardness waywardness and and the the refusal refusal to to that

of a a future future world world of be governed.” governed.” be

— SAIDIYA SAIDIYA HARTMAN HARTMAN —

“In this other life, she would not be required to take all all the the shit shit that that “In this other life, she would not be required to take no one one else else would would accept accept and and pretend pretend to to be be grateful.” grateful.” no

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Isamu Noguchi: Environments of Leisure

By Brett Littman

Yoshiko (Shirley) Yamaguchi in Giza , Egypt, 1953, 08300.3 ©The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York / Artist Rights Society [ARS]. Photo by Isamu Noguchi.

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Between 1949 and 1956, sculptor Isamu Noguchi received grants from Paul and Mary Conover Mellon’s Bollingen Foundation, which had been actively supporting the translation into English of the writings of Carl Jung and early pan-Asian texts. Noguchi was born in the US in 1904 to an Irish-American mother and an absent Japanese father, grew up in Japan between the ages of three and thirteen, and self-incarcerated in 1942 at the Japanese internment camp in Poston, Arizona. He was the perfect recipient and interlocutor for the Bollingen Foundation’s mission of deepening the understanding between Eastern and Western cultures after World War II. With the foundation’s support, Noguchi was able to travel around the world for seven years to conduct research for a book called Environments of Leisure, which he never completed. He said of his intention for the grant, “It is proposed to make a comprehensive study of the physical aspect of the environment of leisure, its meaning, its use, and its relationship to society.

The study will be directed to community enjoyed leisure space. Special attention will be given to the contemplative uses of leisure (for the re-creation of the mind) and to the play world of childhood … it is hoped that the results may be published in order to invite planning of more beautiful and rewarding communities.”

His journeys allowed him to see sites in France, Italy, Spain, Greece, England, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Nepal, Egypt, India, Sri Lanka, Bali, Thailand, Cambodia and Japan. Along the way, Noguchi drew and photographed prehistoric cave drawings, stupas, Jantar Mantar and other astronomical observatories, menhirs (prehistoric standing stones), burial mounds, temples, playgrounds, churches, public squares, Balinese shadow-puppet plays, Japanese gardens, and Buddhist monuments.

Experiencing personally these ancient cultural sites, in which objects, architecture, and landscape fulfilled “their communal, emotional and mystical purposes,” had a profound impact on Noguchi. His

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ideas about what modern sculpture could do encompassed not only the formal and aesthetic, but also an understanding of how sculpture could affect the human psyche and the environment, and in turn activate the social and ritualistic functions of engagement with and enjoyment of public space.

As a result of these travels, Noguchi began to focus on abstract and universal sculptural ideas that explored everything from archaic geological time to cosmology, mythology, humanism, garden design, and the importance of site and scale. His works and proposals (finished and unfinished) during this time – like the bust of Jawaharlal Nehru, the Hiroshima memorial and Peace Bridge, a monument to Gandhi, the UNESCO garden commissioned by Marcel Breuer, and even the prototyping and production of his Akari lanterns in Gifu, Japan – all synthesized Noguchi’s desire to redirect traditional ways of doing things towards the future and his efforts to understand how to “braid” time in new ways.

Dakin Hart, Senior Curator at The Noguchi Museum in New York City, wrote in the catalogue for the 2016 exhibition Isamu Noguchi: Archaic/Modern that Noguchi’s preoccupations with mountains, the sun, atomic time, gardens, archaeology, patents, innovation, materiality, and space all point to how he viewed archaic and modern time.

Hart states, “both terms [“archaic” and “modern”] connote the sense of continuity and the inescapability of culturally delimited perspectives that are at the heart of Noguchi’s understanding of time. Neither word denote a specific time or place so much as a relationship with and point of view on the past and present.”

The idea of the continuity and interconnectedness of ancient and modern time is ever-present in Noguchi’s work. His later stone works, which look like ancient stupas or raw untouched geological outcroppings, were actually fabricated using the most sophisticated and up-to-date heavy machinery, tools, diamond drill bits, and mechanical stonecutters, making

them thoroughly futuristic while retaining the echoes of the past.

In 1968, on the occasion of his retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, Noguchi, in an interview with the critic Tatsuo Kondo, perfectly summed up his personal artistic mission in regards to his relationship with time.

He stated, “The work which contains only what is really necessary would scarcely exist. It would almost disappear, in a sense, an invisible work. I have not reached that point yet. But I would like to go so far. Such a work would claim itself to be art. It has nothing conspicuous, and might look as if it simply fell from heaven … Most things appear new at one time but become old soon, become things that belong to the past. I don’t like them very much. I prefer things which appear alive forever.”

Brett Littman is the director of the The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in Long Island City, New York. Littman’s interests are multidisciplinary: he has overseen more than seventy-five exhibitions and personally curated more than twenty exhibitions over the past decade, dealing with visual art, outsider art, craft, design, architecture, poetry, music, science, and literature. He was named the curator of Frieze Sculpture at Rockefeller Center (2019–20) and is also an art critic, lecturer, and active essayist for museum and gallery catalogues. He has written articles for a wide range of US and international art, fashion, and design magazines.

Noguchi, Isamu. “A Proposed Study of The Environment of Leisure,” c. 1949. Courtesy of the Noguchi Museum Archives.

2 Noguchi, Isamu. “A Proposed Study of The Environment of Leisure,” c. 1949. Courtesy of the Noguchi Museum Archives.

3 Hart, Dakin. Isamu Noguchi: Archaic/Modern.

Published by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C., in association with D Giles Limited, London, 2016.

4 Kondo, Tatsuo, and Noguchi, Isamu. “A Conversation with Isamu Noguchi,” Geijitsu Shincho (July 1968): 15–20. From pp. 9–10 of an unpublished translation by Kazuko Ishida in the Noguchi Museum Archives.

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Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, Cairo, Egypt, 1953, 08304.3 ©The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York / Artist Rights Society [ARS]. Photo by Isamu Noguchi.

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Top, left to right: Mishra Yantra, Jantar Mantar; New Dehli, India, 1949 08446.4 ©The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York / Artist Rights Society [ARS]. Photo by Isamu Noguchi.

Jantar Mantar observatory at Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, 1949-56 04983 ©The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York / Artist Rights Society [ARS]. Photo by Isamu Noguchi.

Bottom: Isamu Noguchi, Bollingen Drawing , ink on paper, ca. 1949-1950. Collection of The Noguchi Museum.

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Top, left to right: Dolmen in Brittany , France, c.1950, 08218.3 ©The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York / Artist Rights Society [ARS]. Photo by Isamu Noguchi.

Isamu Noguchi, Bollingen Drawing , ink on paper, ca. 1949-1950. Collection of The Noguchi Museum.

Bottom: Isamu Noguchi in Versailles, France, 1953, 08224.4 ©The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York / Artist Rights Society [ARS]

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Jantar Mantar Observatory , New Delhi, 1949, 5366 ©The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York / Artist Rights Society [ARS]. Photo by Isamu Noguchi.

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ESTIMATED READING TIME: 01m07s

Christopher Bollen Year Zero In 1975, when the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia, they abolished the calendar and declared it “Year Zero.”

(Much of the regime’s ultra-violent, xenophobic ideology stemmed from French academic Marxism, and so, too, Year Zero had its roots in the notion of “Year One,” dating from the French Revolution.)

The ploy was simple: control time, control the population. “New People” – teachers, academics, artists, doctors, lawyers, politicians, monks, any members of a minority group – were systematically rounded up, and either executed or sent to the fields to work as slave labor. In this classless, agrarian utopia, the self did not exist, and, like death, it existed in a state outside of time. In the four years of the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal reign, owning a clock or a calendar was punishable by death.

After Pol Pot’s ousting in 1979, clocks were readmitted into the public and private sphere.

These photographs are a compilation of all of the clocks I encountered within a twenty-four–hour period during a visit to Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, in September 2019. Clocks are usually such quotidian decor, it is startling to think of them as lethal machines, as symbols of counterrevolutionary thought, as dangerous contraband. I was born in Year Zero, which means none of these clocks are older than I am.

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All photos taken on September 6, 2019 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

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Florian Krewer Killing Time

Florian Krewer, Untitled , 2019, Charcoal on paper, 11 1/4 x 7 1/2 inches, 28.5 x 19 cm

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Florian Krewer, Untitled , 2019, Oil on canvas, 10 x 8 1/2 inches, 25.5 x 21.5 cm Florian Krewer, Untitled , 2019, Charcoal on paper, 11 1/4 x 7 1/2 inches, 28.5 x 19 cm

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Florian Krewer, Untitled , 2019, Charcoal on paper, 15 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches, 39.5 x 26.5 cm

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Florian FlorianKrewer, Krewer,Untitled Untitled, ,2019, 2019,Oil Oilon oncanvas, canvas,10 101/4 1/4x x99inches, inches,26 26x x23 23cm cm

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Ketuta AlexiMeskhishvili “Photography is time and light. Through these images I thought about ways of embracing or repelling marks that time leaves in its wake.”

Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Mother Reader, 2018; archival pigment print; 82 x 66 cm.

Courtesy: the artist, Galerie Frank Elbaz and LC Queisser.

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Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Lesley, after Beaton, 2018; archival pigment print; 62 x 50 cm. Courtesy: the artist, Galerie Frank Elbaz and LC Queisser.

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Ketuta KetutaAlexi-Meskhishvili, Alexi-Meskhishvili,Andro’s Andro’sbook, book,2015; 2015; archival archivalpigment pigmentprint; print;126.1 126.1x x100.3 100.3cm. cm.Courtesy: Courtesy:the theartist, artist,Galerie GalerieFrank FrankElbaz Elbazand andLC LCQueisser.

Queisser.

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Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Maka , 2019; archival pigment print; 80 x 100 cm.

Courtesy: the artist, Galerie Frank Elbaz and LC Queisser.

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Becca Albee Deep Time

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Images from an upcoming project by Becca Albee.

Companion essay by Sarah Workneh.

Creative direction by Monika Uchiyama.

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Chapter 1: Michael There is a bench at Plumb Beach in Brooklyn. This bench, painted green, sits in solitude as a memorial to a single human life, Michael Sandy, and in solidarity with those killed through violent hate crimes.

Michael’s existence on this planet was brief: just twenty-nine years to the day, almost. This bench – not his tomb, but a marker no less – sits sandwiched between Jamaica Bay and the Belt Parkway, where he was hit by a car while fleeing from a group of men who lured him to the desolate beach at night to rob him. They selected him because he was gay and they thought he would put up less of a fight.

On either side of Michael Sandy in the moment of deciding where to run to was the bay – mysterious, full, unending – and a Robert Moses-designed speedway heavy with cars and humanity, maybe bogged down with its designer’s notorious impact on the city, maybe not. I wonder if it made sense in that moment to run towards people, if it was an instinct, a split-second decision in an extraordinary and unfathomable moment – even if he knew as he was running that humans weren’t safe.

Chapter 2: The Belt/The Bay We live our lives in moments. Many of us, including myself, talk about trying to be “present.” But presence, at least in that sense, isn’t mutually exclusive of history. It is also not divorced from our environment, which itself bears the physical traces of our present, our history, our history’s history. The particular location where the Belt Parkway and Plumb Beach meet each other is one of deep juxtaposition.

To the north: man’s supposed “mastery” of city planning, envisioned in the 1930s – ages ago to us who live here day-to-day. And to the south: a watery habitat, home to ninety-one species of fish, 325 species of bird and seemingly endless numbers of less countable reptiles, invertebrates, and organisms.

Along with talk of being present, in similar circles we talk a lot about the Anthropocene – the age of human impact on the Earth. So, along with living things, we can also assume the Bay is home to inert objects such as trash, plastic, chemicals and the other effects of our relatively brief but aggressive existence on this planet. The Belt/The Bay: enemies and bedfellows; moments and a aeons.

Deep time, as a concept, is rooted in the geologic study of changes to the Earth. I think it was mostly referenced when talking about natural shifts – continents moving, sediment building, the way water carved out the Grand Canyon, or how Jamaica Bay itself came to exist. More recently, it relates to the Anthropocene. How we, as humans, have changed the natural world. How we have enacted vulnerability and precarity on what surrounds us. Geologic and organism; moments, but not a aeons.

Chapter 3: The Bay/The Birds It seems to be common knowledge out on Plumb Beach that birds are more popular than Atlantic horseshoe crabs. Each year, in May and June, people gather there to count the horseshoe crabs that emerge from their homes on the ocean floor and crawl onto the shore under the new and full moons to spawn – to deliver their half-billion–year existence into some kind of future.

Becca tells me the counters are often people interested in ensuring the survival of horseshoe crabs so that their eggs, laid in wet sand and the end result of all of this spawning, can feed migratory birds. Although the horseshoe crabs (or variations thereof) have existed longer than birds, they have lost their evolutionary status.

They are the feeders.

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Fans of the horseshoe crab and their seemingly indefatigable past, yet vulnerable present, faithfully take stock of the invertebrates because their population numbers are dropping quickly and steadily. Blame the birds, but the horseshoe crab has human predators.

Our blood is red. Horseshoe-crab blood is blue. It is a constant mystery to me how we figure out what to test in science, but somehow in our comparatively short cohabitation with these animals, we have figured out that that blue blood is something we need. We may have created that need ourselves, I don’t know, but it exists all the same.

And in the deep-time/short-time sense, we may exhaust it. Life decisions made in moments.

Chapter 4: Becca I don’t know much about horseshoe crabs myself, and Michael Sandy became for me a way to think about humans living in deep time, resisting deep time. Michael Sandy wasn’t what brought Becca to Plumb Beach. As with much of her work, she follows the trail. He and his bench were there.

Becca is almost a time capsule herself – a collector of stories, of ephemera that often go unnoticed by others. The blue blood of horseshoe crabs, extracted directly from their living hearts and used in medicine, was part of what captured Becca’s attention. Formalism and function, cruelty and life-saving, a half-billion–year-old unknown history. This inquiry developed alongside visiting the archive of her former professor, mentor, and friend, the conceptual artist Robert Blanchon, who died of AIDS-related complications at the age of thirty-three in 1999. In her research process, Becca found a postcard that she had sent him as an announcement for one of her shows. The image is of frozen water marked by humans in ice skates. Temporary, momentary, but even if that particular mark was fleeting, many others aren’t.

Through her investigation of these precarities – both human and animal, both material and materials left as traces; in this case the seemingly disparate lives of a species over time (again, a half-billion years) and an individual in a specific time (1965-1999) – Becca speaks to preservation and exhaustion; what we have brought on ourselves and what we have fallen victim to as we move in a present. Histories uninvestigated (horseshoe crabs) and histories intentionally obfuscated (Blanchon). In drawing together moments and a aeons, Becca, through photography – often photos where her own hand is present – freezes time, so that we, too, might stop for a moment to see our work.

Chapter 5: Deep Time Those men who tried to rob and then pursued Michael Sandy were more or less kids. The range of their maximum sentences, I just realized, are essentially, and I assume coincidentally, the same range of their ages on the night when they chased him out onto that dark roadway: seventeen to twenty-one years. Michael Sandy’s bench has sat there twenty-four hours a day, so far, for almost a decade. It will sit there, noticed or unnoticed, for as long as the materials or the planet last. His life stands in deep time of a different scale than the horseshoe crabs, different than the material consequence of our existence. Different to Robert Blanchon and different to Becca, who has survived them all. It’s not geologic – but hate and tragedy; love and memory; and the will to preserve vulnerable life can also grow imperceptibly over deep time.

— Sarah Workneh

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Becca Albee is an artist based in New York City.

The photo-based worked presented here are works in progress and research images Albee took in preparation for her upcoming solo exhibition at MIT’s List Projects, on view from December 12, 2019-February 9, 2020.

Video stills and research photographs: Becca Albee Essay: Sarah Workneh Creative direction: Monika Uchiyama Becca Albee has an upcoming solo exhibition at MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, MA, December 12, 2019–February 9, 2020.

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Matthew Barney Diana and Actaeon

Matthew Barney, Diana and Actaeon, 2019.

Courtesy: Gladstone Gallery

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Ladies’ Room: Francesco Vezzoli’s Studio Installation Designer Filippo Bisagni Photo Studio Vezzoli

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Camille Henrot Wet Job

Text by Sarah Demeuse

An intermission is something that is put between two things. To make the minds readjust, to give the body a break. But, most importantly, it remits to the world of theater: it is the in-between moment in which the behind-the-scenes mechanisms operate. The intermission exists so that the onstage illusion will not be broken by insufficient stage management.

A pump is a machine that makes a liquid move from one place to another. The heart is a pump. In some languages, the word for “pump” and “bomb” is the same. In these languages, pumps can support life as much as they can blow it up.

A breast pump creates negative pressure (which causes the breast to believe there’s an infant sucking) at an initial speed of one pull per second. The milk comes out because there is a vacuum around the nipple. Sixty such pulls are a minute.

Like clockwork. Or almost. When I am in it, I don’t have such a measured sense of things. I don’t have a solid sense of the quantity and substance that will be delivered: each time it’s different – in volume, in color, in consistency. Sometimes the session ends at twenty minutes sharp, some-

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times it takes longer and is more uneven, interrupted by reconfigurations (improvements, I like to think) of the original setup.

While I’d like this to go swiftly and fast, once I’m attached it becomes a rhythmic, lulling moment. I play out the cliché of cyclical versus linear time. Pumping occupies a time interval that (I feel) will end when it needs to end, when the circle is rounded. What’s more important, I believe, is the future, linear time this pumping promises to open up.

Each time I sit down with the pump, latching on for our THUMP Shh THUMP Shh THUMP Shh tango, I’m hooked into a very basic positive-negative dynamic. I’m the positive undoing the vacuum. Just like the pumping hum is becoming my builtin metronome, my once-per-second milkrelease marks the passage of time. Even more, the carbohydrates, fats, and potassium stored in the milk will translate into energy for the child. As a lactating human being, my own eating now leads to feeding, my own lived time becomes someone else’s living time. It’s a loop as well as a future beyond my own time.

It’s a common tale that women who breastfeed cannot get pregnant. Their

periods, so it is said, are put on hold.

But science tells us this is only the case when you understand “breastfeeding” as direct lactation (not pumping) that occurs at intervals of at least every three hours, day and night. Most breastfeeding nowadays is a holding pattern of another kind: slowing down, if not fully interrupting, working life; pausing one’s own bodily needs; prioritizing a singular relationship and putting others on the backburner.

Before the mechanical breast pump there was the wet nurse, a role hardly spoken about nowadays though still existent, and common for the elites up until the late 19th century, when “reliable” formula was invented. The wet nurse, who may or may not suckle her own children simultaneously, overproduces. She is to be responsive and on-site at all times.

There is a painting of Louis XIV with his wet nurse: his rosy cheeks directly correspond to her sturdy nipple. The tableau is a baroque reprise of the Madonna-and-child theme: child becomes emperor, Madonna becomes outsourced. Louis’s nurse does not get a break, she is the one working behind the stage so that Anne of Austria can fulfill the royal illusion. She is the intermission.

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Camille Henrot, Wet Job 7, 2019; watercolor on paper; 55.88 x 76.2 cm INTERMISSION

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Sarah Morris

Sarah Morris, Sakura, 2018

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01-15 TIMECODES 15 15 Sakura Sakura 2018 2018 14 14 Finite Finite and and Infinite Infinite Games Games 2017 2017 13 13 Abu Abu Dhabi Dhabi 2016 2016 12 12 Strange Strange Magic Magic 2014 2014 11 11 Rio Rio 2012 2012 10 10 Points Points on on aa Line Line 2010 2010 09 09 Chicago Chicago 2011 2011 08 08 Beijing Beijing 2008 2008 07 07 1972 1972 2008 2008 06 06 Robert Robert Towne Towne 2006 2006 05 05 Los Los Angeles Angeles 2004 2004 04 04 Miami Miami 2002 2002 03 03 Capital Capital 2000 2000 02 02 AM/PM AM/PM 1999 1999 01 01 Midtown Midtown 1998 1998 The artist is filming in a molecular biology lab in Kyoto. Shredded paper is in a clear plastic bag. She kicks the bag into the line of the camera. Intellectual property made into a confetti of genetic data. The scientist explains the configuration of companies that actually own the copyrights and patents that surround pluripotent stem cells. She makes a diagram in her mind. Timecode in the camera is 02:30:27. The artist creates a script from the cult book Finite and Infinite Games. She envisions a male voice reading her script in the empty, unused, and not yet Elbphilharmonie hall in Hamburg. Convincing the poet to read her script, she says, “The building is just an excuse,” as her taxi hurls up Sixth Avenue. The artist in a red skirt is in the middle of the Liwa desert. The sand is peach, beige, and red. The environment is seemingly apolitical, but British Petroleum designed an intricate subterranean plan to get the oil out on behalf of the benevolent dictator. Timecode reads 12:28:04. The artist is in the middle, not the Bois de Boulogne.

The prostitutes, almost medieval, using the forest as their workplace in the middle of the city, are unaware of a museum going up 200m north. Niemeyer’s manicure was immaculate in his building called Ypiranga, gripping the black leather wheelchair arms; he had become part of his chair at age 104. He tells her she is “intense.” The artist filmed her future address in Philip Johnson’s Rolodex card for Paul Rudolph. 23 Beekman Place. The phone number’s handwritten and reads 212-765-1450. 03:54:28 The lunch hour in Chicago was coming to an end, the long orange nails anxiously tapped on the edge of the bright green soda, hovering above her pastrami sandwich. Four women dance with enormous ribbons in an outdoor park in the days leading up to August 8, 2008 at 8pm, which was officially the beginning of the Olympic Games in Beijing. One can ignore the spectacle. 04:26:02 An elegant Munich apartment with a sign outside that said “Intelligenz Systems Transfer.” Dr Georg Sieber, a choreographer, was in charge of the security for the Olympics of 1972. He sits with a giant Pinocchio behind his desk and speech bubble hanging from his ceiling. He resigned from his post the morning of September 5 upon Black September. His plan was not being followed by the Germans. 02:00:00 The artist stands in a small study above a double garage in Los Angeles. Robert Towne, legendary script doctor, says to her, “You are an anarchist trying to control the fantasy world.” With these words he defines the director and the artist. 17:02:01 A Cuba Libre is mixed by a bartender in Morris Lapidus’s Fontainebleau hotel. Scarface was filmed there. Joan Didion points out the largest CIA operation inside of America occurred in Miami. A paper coffee cup sits in the Cabinet Room of the White House. The president sits next to his enemies, engaging them in debate and dialogue. Timecode reads 02:01:04. There was no tripod for the camera in this situation at this time. She was unaware back then of how many situations she would place herself in. How many situations would unfold and make an image, and a navigational tool; a chain of events, places, and people. A camera could be a weapon the secret service claimed. The camera was placed on the same table that held President Clinton’s coffee cup. 05:12:00 The artist looked at a monitor of a large building that creates a fluorescent green X. An American hotel bathed in green. The helicopter flew down the durational strip of Las Vegas, catching the turbulence of the vivid sprawl below. 05:00:00 A woman paces back and forth outside of a travertine building designed by Gordon Bunshaft. A cigarette is in her hand. A man passes with a briefcase. In the foreground, a woman in beige crosses the camera with a gold watch.

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SAKURA SAKURA // 2018 2018 02:30:27 02:30:27//02:34:48 02:34:48

Kyoto KyotoUniversity UniversityCenter Centerfor foriPS iPSCell CellResearch Researchand andApplication Application//Scientist Scientistorganizing organizingspecimen specimentrays trays

FINITE FINITE AND AND INFINITE INFINITE GAMES GAMES // 2017 2017 09:06:02 09:06:02//09:42:04 09:42:04

Kairos KairosFilm FilmCompany Company//Munich Munich//Library Librarycorridor corridor//Alexander AlexanderKluge Klugewalking walkingaway awayfrom fromcamera camera//Voice Voicesays: says:

“Cultural “Culturaldeviation deviationdoes doesnot notreturn returnus usto tothe thepast, past,but butcontinues continueswhat whatwas wasbegun begunand andnot notfinished finished in in the the past. past. Societal Societal convention, convention, on on the the other other hand, hand, requires requires that that aa completed completed past past be be repeated repeated in in the the future. future. Society Society has has all all the the seriousness seriousness of of immortal immortal necessity. necessity. Culture Culture resounds resounds with with the the laughter laughterof ofunexpected unexpectedpossibility. possibility.Society Societyisisabstract, abstract,culture cultureisisconcrete.” concrete.”

ABU ABU DHABI DHABI // 2016 2016 27:28:03 27:28:03//27:51:04 27:51:04

Zayed ZayedSports SportsCenter Center//Abu AbuDhabi DhabiNational NationalDay Day//Fly-over Fly-over

STRANGE STRANGE MAGIC MAGIC // 2014 2014 12:28:04 12:28:04//12:42:01 12:42:01

Bois Boisde deBoulogne Boulogne//Jardin JardinD’Acclimatation D’Acclimatation//Kids Kidson onaatrampoline trampoline

RIO RIO // 2012 2012 08:17:03 08:17:03//08:58:12 08:58:12

Edifício EdifícioYpiranga Ypiranga//Niemeyer Niemeyerininwheelchair wheelchair//Lenin Leninsculpture sculpture//Horizontal Horizontalfemale femalenudes nudes

POINTS POINTS ON ON A A LINE LINE // 2010 2010 11:00:04 11:00:04//12:12:08 12:12:08

Glass GlassHouse House//Philip PhilipJohnson JohnsonRolodex Rolodex//Jasper JasperJohns Johnsphone phonenumber number

CHICAGO CHICAGO // 2011 2011 03:54:28 03:54:28//03:57:30 03:57:30

Manny’s Manny’sinterior interior//Close Closeup up//Orange Orangelong longnails nails//Salad, Salad,green greenfizzy fizzydrink drinkon onice ice

BEIJING BEIJING // 2008 2008 01:16:45 01:16:45//01:17:31 01:17:31

Temple Templeof ofHeaven HeavenPark Park//Several Severalribbon ribbonladies ladiesdancing dancing

1972 1972 // 2008 2008 04:26:02 04:26:02//05:20:08 05:20:08

Intelligenz IntelligenzSystem SystemTransfer Transfer//Dr. Dr.Georg GeorgSieber Sieber//Pinocchio Pinocchioininthe thebackground background//Voice Voicesays: says:

“And “Andso soat atthat thattime timeIIdid didnot notsee seeaaconflict conflictnor nordid didIIin inactual actualfact factsee seesociety societydrift driftapart.” apart.”

ROBERT TOWNE / 2006 02:00:00 / 02:03:55

Pacific Palisades / Robery Towne’s desk / Voice says to camera:

“You are an anarchist trying to control the fantasy world.”

LOS ANGELES / 2004 19:32:04 / 19:39:07

Paramount Studios / Mr. & Mrs. Smith / Film set / Brad Pitt punches himself

MIAMI / 2002 17:02:01 / 17:02:07

Fountainebleau Hotel Bar / Cuba Libre detail

CAPITAL / 2000 03:01:04 / 03:01:14

White House Cabinet Room / Clinton Listening / Coffee in paper cup

AM/PM / 1999 05:12:00 / 05:37:00

Las Vegas / The Mirage Hotel and MGM Grand / Helicopter / Fly-over

MIDTOWN / 1998 05:00:00 / 05:26:00

Grace Building / Woman smoking / High Heels

Sarah Morris, Lunar Paintings, “November 2019” to “February 2016”

Lunar Paintings from November 2019 to February 2016

Sarah Morris, Sakura, 2018

Sakura, Sakura,2018 2018

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Mick Barr Annwn Current Incarnation by Ari Marcopoulos “My studio is a large space with stone walls and a steel roof. It’s a large empty space in which there’s room for people to perform. When I proposed Mick to play there he was also intrigued by what the sound would do in such a space with the stark reflectivity of sound of these hard surfaces. I decided for a stationary camera and a second handheld camera. I wanted to film it as dry as possible and have the sound carry it. We were just 3 people in the space Mick, Colin Marston the sound recordist and myself.” — Ari Marcopoulos 220

All images: Ari Marcopoulos, Mick Barr , 2019; stills from video; 12:50 min. © Ari Marcopoulos

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