Dismantling is a serie of collaborative works that focuses on a recovered batch of some forty advertising posters in bus shelter format (176x120cm).
Each collaboration involves a selection of up to five (at most) of these posters. They are considered as an ambiguous materiality, subject to appropriation.
For Dismantling #2, we decided to deprive ourselves of sight: both in the choice of the five posters and in the work that resulted from them.
Our project to build faces also took place in several sessions in complete darkness and with minimal technical aspects.
Thus, these masks, these faces have appeared in our eyes and have looked at us, in the same way that they appear to any new viewer and look at it.
The residues of advertising content that compose them do not result from choice, just as it is not a choice to have, on a daily basis, advertising in our visual field.
The video presents itself as a spatial, historical and psychological journey in the Kustody depot of the Technical University of Dresden (TUD).
Created in each university in the former East Germany, Kustody is a central institution responsible for preserving traditional university collections and art collections. The Technical University of Dresden has nearly forty educational and historical collections, each linked to its own Institute, in the fields of engineering, building and environmental sciences, mathematics and natural sciences or medicine.
The Kustody depot preserves, without being a museum reserve, a number of objects from the various institutes but also, and in particular, the Collection of Gifts of Guests. The latter gathers and inventories the gifts offered during inter-university meetings and, in addition to offering us a psychology of the object, testifies to the geopolitical history of the TUD.
Beholding The Gaze also opens this contextual excursion to its limits and presents photographs of military doctor Reinhold Ruge (1862-1917), a specialist in tropical diseases, as well as a selection of educational slides on the use of electron microscopy in materials science.
This proposal is the result of a residency at the Technical University of Dresden following an invitation to several artists from Gwendolin Kremer (Historical Collections, Technical University of Dresden), Andreas Kempe and Patricia Westerholz (Ursula Walter Gallery, Dresden).
An exhibition presented all the works:
REMEMBERING THE FUTURE
Materials for a postmodern society
From September 15, 2017 to February 2, 2018
Altana Galerie im Görges-Bau
www.tu-dresden.de/kustodie
and:
Galerie Ursula Walter
www.galerieursulawalter.de
The photographs of these Berlin paving stones are raised in portrait format and face each other, they shift the initial perspective of this surface. The ground becomes wall and page, the stripes and lineaments of the rock reach the status of drawing, inscription and writing.
What it says, in addition to the human need to shape and domesticate matter, is the physical constitution of these samples, the uniqueness of each individual and the dialogue they establish among themselves. The rustic signs, which our contemporary eyes, leached from the present day, could interpret as those of a floor of lamentation, date back to an age when man did not exist, or was not in a position to do as much damage to the physical world on which he was evolving.
Dismantling is a serie of collaborative works that focuses on a recovered batch of some forty advertising posters in bus shelter format (176x120cm).
Each collaboration involves a selection of up to five of these posters. They are considered as an ambiguous materiality, subject to appropriation.
For Dismantling #1, we decided to completely avoid the intrinsic advertising part of each of the chosen posters (reference to a product, injunction...).
Of their identity remains only a colorimetric abstraction in the form of a large confetti. Their organization in the form of a grid is intended to be a severe ontological competition to the original.
Culture matérielle : les objets d’un départ
Boîte d’archives, 20 x 30 x 44 cm
La boîte d’archives rassemble les objets suivants :
- Une petite boîte
- Deux enveloppes
- Un boîtier à lunette, J. Gueguen - opticien
- Une chemise
- Un disque vinyle, L’oiseau de Feu, Igor Stravinsky, par Pierre Dervaux
- Un sac plastique Illums Bolighus
- Un morceau de toile cirée
- Une grande planche à découper
- Six planchettes à découper
- Un coffret de massage Concentra
les ouvrages :
- Georges Bataille, La Part maudite précédé de La Notion de dépense (1949),
Paris, Éditions de Minuit, coll. Critique, 1980, 231 p.
- Michel Leiris, L’Afrique fantôme (1934), Paris, éd. Gallimard, coll. Tel, 1992, 655 p.
- Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes tropiques (1955), Paris, Plon,
Collection Terre Humaine, 1984, 504 p.
- Vincent Debaene, L’adieu au voyage. L’ethnologie française entre science et littérature,
(2010), Paris, Gallimard, coll. Bibliothèque des sciences humaines, 2010, 521 p.
ainsi que :
- L’édition 1/10 de La fin des voyages, R. Görgen, 2016, 48 p.
Culture matérielle : les objets d’un départ et La fin des voyages ont été présentés du 5 février au 26 mars 2016 dans l'exposition collective Psychologie bibliologique de Vincent Romagny à la galerie mfc-michèle didier, Paris:
http://www.micheledidier.com/index.php/fr/mfc-expositions/mfc-archives/mfc-expositions-vincent-romagny-psychologie-bibliologique.html
La boîte d’archives a été réalisée en collaboration avec Hélène Genvrin:
http://www.helenegenvrin.com/
This issue is the product of a carte blanche given to Stéphane Le Mercier
in collaboration with Nicolas Tardy
General coordination: Vincent Bonnet
Imagines comes in a set of five works or series of works (Imago # 1 to # 5). At the origin of this work there was a set of 18 old Kodak1 photographic boxes, transformed into frames by an individual to present his collection of butterflies. Over time the butterflies eventually decomposed into bits and dust, and the frames landed at a flea market. My approach consisted first of all in the restoration of what remained of these boxes and the collection, then in the presentation of the backs of these boxes, followed by the archiving (scans and photographs) of what was removed from the frames (acetate film that served as glass and organic remains), and finally in an interpretation of what remained (digital collage).
Each butterfly box must have represented considerable time and work for the individual who built them: he had to cut the lid to make a frame (which he coated in tinted Kraft paper), place a sheet of acetate film instead of glass, glue the butterflies and type their name on a piece of paper which he also cut and pasted. Finally, on the back of each frame he placed a homemade hook using pieces of Kraft paper and string, and tried to remove the labels from the Kodak product.
The term imagines (imagoes in English) which was used for the title, is the Latin plural of imago2 : imago refers to the shape of the adult butterfly once emerged from the pupa stage and also means, through its Latin etymology, representation, appearance or image. It was also used in psychoanalysis to designate, within inter-family relationships, primordial representations (Urbilder) or the distorted unconscious (Jung and Lacan). Psyche, the personification of the soul’s immortality for ancient Greeks, was also represented with butterfly wings - the term psukhê meaning both soul and butterfly.
1 Including Kodalith ortho and Kodak Super speed duplicating film 2751. These large-format films are mainly used to make duplicates and contact prints.
2 French uses imagos for the plural, German imagines and English imagoes.
Imago # 1
________
The boxes were minimally restored : cleaning and recovery of the remains fallen on the sides due to the vertical storage, and replacement of the original rhodoïd.
Imago # 2
________
Edition of 18 Ditone prints 31x43cm, archive box, acetate.
The edition contains reproductions of the 18 backs of these boxes.
Imago # 3
________
The original rhodoïd belonging to the 18 boxes were recovered and individually scanned for archiving.
Imago # 4
________
The organic remains of each of the 18 boxes were recovered and individually scanned for archiving.
Imago #5
_______
Digital collage.
Imagines was presented at the exhibition Les voyages immobiles with Skander Zouaoui at T66, Freiburg (D), in partnership with Schaufenster, Selestat / April 2014.
