In this age of streaming and real-time information, image production is in the hands of a growing number of journalists, reporters and amateurs across the entire media range : a proliferation of documentary images that sets us wondering about the political power of artists. What might be art’s function today as a means of representation ? What role can artists still play in the mediation of reality ?
The title of the exhibition, This morning I attentively observed the destruction of the world, then I went back to work, is taken from Kafka’s Diaries. The sense of powerlessness it conveys has a very contemporary ring to it as popular uprisings multiply around the world. How might we now envisage the possibility of shared political commitment ? The exhibition brings together artists drawn to the media effects of « invisibilisation » of a historical or social collective situation ; artists whose approaches aim less at denouncing the ideological fabrication of images – with their implicit invisibility or overexposure – than at modifying media systems in a way that underscores their political, economic and psychological effects. While today’s endless stream of images is conducive to a feeling of derealisation, the works presented show ways of engaging with reality via subversive use of such tools as photography, historical reconstruction, field surveys and montage.
Artists : Éric Baudelaire, Jeremy Deller, Harun Farocki, Élise Florenty, Hans Haacke, Olivier Menanteau, Franck Leibovici, Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger, Julien Prévieux, Bruno Serralongue, Sean Snyder, Taroop & Glabel, Carey Young.
Curator : Keren Detton
Image: Sean Snyder, "Analepsis", 2004
