Banqueroute
The project takes the shape of a fertile parasitization in which two organisms coexist in a kind of relationship, which, although seemingly negative for the host of the parasite, turns out to be necessary for its balance, like the mushroom that is able to emerge in unsettled environments[1]. A series of questions consequently emerge from the confrontation. What do we collect and why? What influence does the collection have on the creation? What type of “values” do we attribute to collecting and creation overall?
The Private Views exhibition gives the floor to collectors from Liège while the Banqueroute addresses the topic from the point of view of the artists, “producers” of all collections. The artworks voluntarily lodge themselves in the margins and the interstices of scenography and the museum, a subtle nod to the marginal and often precarious position granted to the “workers” and “producers” of culture. This singular stance also echoes creation once it goes beyond the norm of collections, art market or institutions. Does art need to be seen, collected or legitimized to exist? Banqueroute unveils a discreet journey where the visitor is steered towards physical, intellectual and sensorial action to produce a broader experience that is centered on our ability to pay attention to others.
The artworks initiate two lines of thinking. The sculptures by Charlie Malgat, Maria Vita Goral and Julia Gault question the material durability that is induced by the conservation of a collection. What place do artworks whose materiality is either temporary (protocol, performance, installation) or doomed to disappear (ephemeral artwork, use of perishable materials) occupy in contemporary collections? The second line of thinking leads to a shift from a financial, patrimonial and market value of art, towards social, poetic or political values. Arthur Cordier, Joséphine Kaeppelin or Harriet Rose Morley allude to the fragile status of the artist and reconsider their own position within communication and production systems. Marjolein Guldentops, Julie Gaubert, Emile Hermans, Alicia Kremser, Cathleen Owens, Yue Yuan and Jean-Marie Massou poetically or humorously orchestrate artistic interventions that recall our daily lives, sometimes in a barely visible way, while playing with our perception and implying the social and political loss or disillusionment of our era.
[1] As recalled by the words of Anna Tsing who questions “the possibilities of living in the ruins of capitalism” in Le champignon de la fin du monde, Éditions de la Découverte, 2017.
John Baldessari
(1931-2020, USA)
I Am Making Art (1971) 18’46’’
In 1970 the California artist John Baldessari erased his own training as a painter in a single spectacular gesture: by burning all of his canvases from 1953 to 1966 at a San Diego crematorium, baking the ashes into cookies, and displaying them at the Museum of Modern Art as part of its landmark exhibition Information.
The artist produced this witty video the following year. In it, Baldessari—a towering figure at six feet seven—walks in front of the lens, his legs cropped off at the bottom of the frame. With deadpan irreverence, he enacts a series of unaffected gestures to the camera, repeating in a monotone voice the same phrase each time he strikes a pose: “I am making art.” These wry actions not only satirize performance art, which was then on the rise, but also underscore the modernist notion that any act can be considered an artwork.
Though I Am Making Art now appears simple and delightfully low-fidelity, it was produced on equipment that was then state-of-the-art: a Sony Portapak recording system, introduced in 1967. This affordable and portable consumer device quickly became a favorite tool for artists to produce works in the new medium of video.
Messieurs Delmotte
(1976, BE), Lives and works in Antwerp (BE)
Messieurs Delmotte positions himself somewhere between reality and imagination, between genius and dilettantism. Distinguishing himself through a formal dress code, poker face expression and meticulously combed hair, Messieurs Delmotte presents himself as a dashing character (a double) that surprises his audience with – unpredictable and absurd – gestural discoveries. And yet such gaiety and nonsensical behavior betray an existential and poetic revolt. Messieurs Delmotte engages himself in a hilarious and heroic battle dealing with objects, humans or animals alike. In so doing, he undermines ‘the rules of the game’.
Always ironic towards the art world, Messieurs Delmotte explains how his piece has been taken off an exhibition in favor of another artist. All what’s left is the nail : le clou.
https://messieursdelmotte.net/
Joséphine Kaeppelin
(1985, FR), Lives and works in Heerlen (NL)
They Have a Plan (2023), 19′
April 2021, Josephine arrives in Bataville to infiltrate the research team of the fabrique autonome des acteurs. Her mission, throughout the season, is to observe and write down what she sees and understands about what the actresses do at work. As a result, she wrote more than 200 short texts, often by dictation using an audio recorder. In 2022, Joséphine chooses about twenty short texts to play them in front of the camera. The result is the video Elles ont un plan.
A video, in fixed shot, structured by successive chapters (the figure, the position, the outfit, the skills, the mental image) which speaks about the work of a group of individuals.
https://www.josephinekaeppelin.com/
Eve Gabriel Chabanon,
(1989, FR) Lives and works in Brussels
Mon seul défaut est de durer trop (2018), 11’44’’
In 2018, Ève Chabanon was invited by the Frac Grand Large to take up a residency at the municipal art schools of Beauvais, Denain and Saint-Quentin, as part of the Archipel programme. In the course of her encounters, she took a particular interest in the museums in the interior of the Hauts-de-France region. Although relatively numerous and diverse in terms of their remit, these museums are confronted with often difficult economic and political situations. These include the need to keep up with visitor numbers, the non-replacement of posts, and even the lack of exhibition space, condemning collections to invisibility. At a time when the very workings of some institutions appear to have been seriously undermined, Ève Chabanon raised the spectre of a fictitious fire and put the teams to the test… At once simple and difficult, the question was wrapped up in a short story, and concluded with a few good words about a terrible choice to be made between saving a Rembrandt or a cat: “And you, in a museum fire, which object would you save?
https://www.fracgrandlarge-hdf.fr/app/uploads/2021/02/190320-edition-nume%CC%81rique.pdf
Dainius Liskevicius,
(1970, LT), Lives and works in Vilnius
La Caricature (2009), 5’30’’, video performance
Video performance “La Caricatura” made according to the drawing of Vitalijus Suchockis, famous Lithuanian caricaturist, which was published in the humor magazine “Šluotos kalendorius” (Vilnius, 1971). This soviet time caricature, ironically reflects the attitude of the society to an artist and a creativity of that time. However, this attitude still prevails in post-soviet consciousness of our days.
Dainius Liškevičius belongs to the generation of artists, who have significantly contributed to the renewal of artistic expression after the restoration of Lithuania independence. His works are characterised by social engagement, contextuality, irony and social critique. Reacting to the topography of a specific place, he examines human behaviour and experience, identity and cultural values, collisions of public and private spaces and collective and personal memory. In 2015 Dainius Liškevičius represented Lithuania at the 56th Venice Biennale, where he presented his Museum project. In 2021, the artist was awarded the Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Art.
Arthur Cordier
(1993, BE), lives and works between Brussels and The Hague (NL)
Don’t Worry, Painters with a hat, installation, 2023
Le temps ne brûle pas, in situ installation, 2023
In a playful or pseudo-analytical form, Arthur Cordier mixes up the visual codes of our consumer economy and uses the effectiveness of commercial strategies against itself in a tautological and often parasitic manner. He replays the aesthetics of bureaucracy, entrepreneurship and effectiveness with relational, situational or contextual artworks which enable him to insist on the saving of the artistic practice in a society centered on production.
Hanging from the picture rail, Don’t Worry (2023) by Arthur Cordier displays a green cap with the slogan don’t worry just a hobby. The artwork plays with the codes of branding and confronts the posture of the artist in the competitive context of ultra-professionalization of the artistic practice. The cap was frequently worn to paint, connects the artist to the “people who paint and wear hats” group and invites informally several artists to question contemporary painting. In other words: distorting the uniform or the work accessory to get him to talk about art and creation.
Le temps ne brûle pas (2023) is an installation created for the staff room in the basement of the building. This artwork was designed for the museum team and will only be visible to its members.
Julie Gaubert
(1996, FR), lives and works in Lille (FR)
Mauvaises graines, 2022, installation, nettles, video
Mauvaises graines (2022) by Julie Gaubert is an installation which is made up of a culture of nettles. “Abandoned plants on the edges of sidewalks and roads which have only waste and exhaust pipes as a company: nettles resist. Lively and robust, they adapt, warriors of hostile times.”[1] The presentation of these nettles within the institutional context of the exhibition raises the following question: are they still wild? A gesture of attention and care that enhances the symbolic status of the object. Nettles usually proliferate in fallow lands and discreetly participate in our ecosystem. These “weeds” shift our gaze towards a system of micro-resistance and autonomy. “Mauvaises graines by Julie Gaubert therefore certainly has a poetic dimension but the artwork is also the expression of a biopolitics of marginal beings who claim their independence.”[2] The artwork is part of a practice of decompartmentalization between actions, sculptures and videos that Julie Gaubert initiates from a questioning of the hierarchical structures of dominance. The artwork does not act as an end in itself and releases poetic and political moments which foster action and debate.
[1] Notes by the artist, 2022.
[2] Florian Gaité, 2023, extract of the text written for Antichambre, exhibition by Julie Gaubert, created in the Tremplin residence with Espace Croisé and supported by the DRAC (Hauts-de-France).
Website: https://www.juliegaubert.com/
Julia Gault
Où le désert rencontrera la pluie (2023), installation, raw clay, metal shelves
(1991, FR), lives and works in Paris (FR).
In her work, the artist repeatedly confronts the transient shaping of natural materials with the coldness and inertia of metallic structures. Malleability and alteration face immobility. The notions of territory, habitat, resilience and collapse are in turn addressed in this subtly political approach.
In her artwork Où le désert rencontrera la pluie (2023), raw soil becomes the constructive and narrative element while water is the activating element. The water-carrying containers will progressively disintegrate over the course of the exhibition and confront us with a bunch of ruins which disappear or appear right in front of us. The unthinkable theory of a mortal civilization finds a poetic echo in the sculptures and installations of Julia Gault. The use of impermanent materials raises the question of the preservation of a deliberately non-perennial artwork. A processual and “unmuseumable” artwork.
Maria Vita Goral
La route (2018), Performative installation and protocol
(1991, UA), lives and works in Liège (BE)
Maria Vita Goral’s multidisciplinary practice summons objects and images from our daily lives to raise historical, symbolic, emotional and even anthropological questions. She artistically conveys the permanent movement of the world, the things or the ideas which surround us and fosters instability, disappearance or ephemerality.
This perpetual displacement echoes her personal history and is concretized by the motif of the route. The artwork presented for Banqueroute uses this motif as a crossing of states which recalls, among other things, the inexorable passage of time. La route (2018) is a performative installation composed of pigments which are locked in blocks of ice which take the shape of cobblestones. The artwork traces an evanescent path in front of the entrance to the museum and will disappear in just a few hours. A laborious and poetic gesture, gratuitous and absurd, a clear opposition to the productivist injunctions of our era. La route opens the way to an introspective questioning of our ability to act on reality. A prototype of the artwork will be presented during the exhibition while its activation will take place on the weekend of June 30 to July 2, 2023.
Marjolein Guldentops
Lost and Found (2023), Vinyl installation, 160 x 21 cm
Bureau of the Lost Causes, Installation and performance
Marjolein Guldentops employs, as an artist and an author, the concept of ‘wordling’. She investigates the connection between language, cultural context and urban rhythms and flows which shape our perceptions of our environment. The artist uses graphic and typographic elements to create spatial compositions and to give a plastic expression to language and words. The installation Lost and Found (2023) explores in the form of a poem, an ode to fluidity, the multiple facets and connotations of the verb “to lose”.
Her creative process also involves repurposing and recontextualizing elements of corporate culture, such as desk settings, stationary objects and administrative codes to question their functionality and meaning. Bureau of the Lost Causes (2021) is an immersive installation and performance which becomes the place of conversation based on personal stories. The project wants to open up a space for connection, empathy and reflection. The artist deflects the impersonal coldness of the administrative tools to consider the value we place on the things we have lost, and how we cope with the feelings of disorientation and uncertainty that arise from there.
The conversations between the artist and the visitor are conceived as an investigation and are recorded on a long roll of paper, simultaneously becoming an archive and a “living document”. In response to the Banqueroute exhibition, the artist will suggest interrogations about the notions of inventory, the story we tell, mysticism and cultural heritage.
Cathleen Owens
And so on and so on (2023), video, 04 :31 min, loop
And so on and so on (2023) by Cathleen Owens is a short video in which the artist engages in a frontal dialogue with the viewer, confessing a list of daily actions while addressing direct questions: “Is it helpful to you?” or “You need some help?” The artist uses the form of the self-portrait and stages herself using the codes of social media, the new platforms for exchange and communication. Her confession, in addition to put the viewer in an uncomfortable situation of voyeurism, addresses a set of clichés which recall the injunction to happiness, well-being and success in the professional and personal spheres. A quest, as much as a conditioning, mocked by the repetition and the superposition of the actions and their multiplication, formulated on a disillusioned tone by the artist. We know neither the why nor the how. The staging is also that of a situation pushed to the absurd which evokes as much a posture of failure, of loss of reference marks as an incapacity to communicate or act. At the crossroads of art and social life, the multidisciplinary work of the artist is interested in the linguistic and communicational devices which highlight the different persuasive spheres of contemporary culture.
Alicia Kremser
Blurred boundary moment, 2023, Installation in-situ, Vinyl
While efficiency, success or performance may be worn proudly in our society as a sign of reliability, it is not always easy to publicly display our limitations and uncertainties. Alicia Kremser’s artwork transforms the exhibition space, the museum, into a place of openness and shared intimacy. A simple phrase activated by the sunlight, a shadow that appears and disappears every day, blending in with the architecture and inviting the visitors to question themselves on the perception of the place. Creating a direct and still subtle interconnection with the viewer, the in-situ installation is in itself based on the fragility and fugacity of the moment as a metaphor of our social interactions. Alicia Kremser’s artworks lead us to reconsider the way we shape each other’s lives by placing us in front of what looks like a coincidence of “being at the right place at the right time”. The message of the sentence is directly addressed to us. In doing so, the artist materializes her own feelings and thoughts, transforming a silent public space into a safe place where to express our deeper self and extend our ability to listen and pay attention to the “Other”.
Jean-Marie Massou
(1950-2020, FR)
Selection of sound artworks, Label La Belle Brute, FR
Jean-Marie Massou lived for 45 years in the forest of Marminiac in the French department of Lot. In this natural space and gargantuan studio, he produced a “œuvre-monde” alone there: hundreds of recorded tapes, thousands of engraved stones, tons of rubble moved to dig kilometers of underground galleries, drawings and collages, traces of a universal mission for a better world. A selection of sound artworks by Jean-Marie Massou is included in the route. These are recorded from rudimentary material on audio tapes. With humility and a disturbing sincerity, the voice of the artist, sometimes difficult to understand, nevertheless transports us into a hypnotic universe. In the form of songs or laments, the artist addresses both his memories and his concerns and brings to light subjects of astonishing topicality as well as a singular and touching personal artistic sensitivity. The presence of Jean-Marie Massou in the exhibition is a possible answer to the following question: Does art need to be seen, collected or legitimized in order to exist? He shares with many artists a form of limitless commitment to creation and creates an unclassifiable and yet, in many aspects, universal artwork.
Charlie Malgat
(1990, FR), lives and works in Paris, FR
Référent présent (Agony), Partie I & II, 2023, latex, natural foam, (2x) 150 x 30 cm
The sculptural artwork by Charlie Malgat is transitory and on the way to extinction. The remains of Agony are placed on the ground, within the permanent collection, and opens up a questioning around what could be called the “depreservation”[1] of the artworks and the death of the materials. The artwork lived in various forms and suffered damages and, instead of restoring it, the artist decides to heal these wounds by leaving them visible. From these small cuts spring new forms, like a mushroom which would come into the interstice of another body. A programmed decomposition which gives rise to the display of two injured bodies, recumbent bodies, witnesses of the past. These soft sculptures cut in foam are covered with latex, a material as toxic as it is sensual which confers a dimension as playful as it is carnal. Insisting on what is usually hidden from our view, the body of Agony proposes to elevate what disgusts us to the aesthetic rank. Charlie Malgat addresses the aesthetics of a rotting carcass and questions the limits of our anthropocentric connection to the living, human and non-human, as well as to the death and disappearance of what we seemingly “possess”.
[1] Note by the artist
Carole Louis
(1985, BE), lives and works in Brussels
La monnaie de ta pièce, 2023
In-situ installation, latex, 1 cent coins
The installation by Carole Louis may be waiting to trip you up. A tool willingly close to the popular slingshot or the child’s toy, an oversized slingshot will welcome us as soon as we enter the museum. As the artist describes herself as a clown and a warrior, she could not have found a better accessory. Could we consider the artwork as a means and not an end? It would become the place of new transactions that could go beyond the aesthetic or financial order to move towards a kind of emancipation or towards a factor of trouble or questioning. In the playful form of disobedience or in a more political form of revolt, the artwork La Monnaie de ta pièce (2023) insinuates with humor and sarcasm a questioning of the “role” or “status” of the artist and recalls the all-too-known cultural adage “to get paid peanuts”.
Emile Hermans
(1988), lives and works between Gent and Maastricht
Seeing is believing, 2018
Installation, dummy camera, LED’s, 12 x 12 x 8 cm
It is certain! is one of the most iconic Magic 8-Ball responses. That magic ball from which all our questions will find an answer. What more could anybody ask?! No need for a crystal ball to see the future, it already seems all mapped out. That is at least what the installation by Emile Hermans might suggest. A secure and safe future which already determines our future behaviors. Seeing is believing questions our belief systems, superstitions or certainties and the limits they have. A global control and monitoring system which insinuates itself into our dearest wishes.
Joséphine Kaeppelin
(FR, 1985), lives and works in Heerlen, NL
Tourner en rond, 2018, rug, 300 x 150 cm, Editions
Extraits de procès-verbaux, 2018, 36 postcards
Elles ont un plan (They have a plan), 2022, 19 min.
You may tread on Tourner en rond by Joséphine Kaeppelin without noticing it at first sight. It is indeed a simple rug which is similar to those that adorn the storefronts of businesses and shops. It is a marketing and communication tool which gets diverted by the artist to transcribe several verbs inviting us to action resulting from a process of audit lead by the artist. The worlds of work are at the core of her practice, the individuals who populate them, their feelings and experiences. Since 2017, Joséphine Kaeppelin took on the role of graphics and intellectuals services provider, broadened the question to the status of the artist, the woman artist and ironically mobilized the codes of contemporary liberalism. The film Elles ont un plan, presented during the activation weekend and the postcards Extraits de procès-verbaux are both realized in a specific context in La Fabrique Autonome des Acteurs (FAA). The artist followed the team playing the role of an investigator or an observer while registering words on a Dictaphone that she then used in her works. Those piece also acts as “potential openings” for new situations. From text and language, Joséphine Kaeppelin induces a shift, like a game of mirrors that would include other ways of seeing, attracting our attention to better lead us to action. “It’s always good to be disturbed”, as if the world came to tap us on the shoulder, to show us new things. You have to keep your eyes wide open. (…) This is the condition for staying alive, being disturbed”[1].
[1] Notes from the book : Julie Abbou « Tenir sa langue. Le langage, un lieu de lutte féministe », Editions les Périgrines, 2022.
Yue Yuan
(1989, CH), lives and works between Gent (BE) and Paris (FR).
Freestanding, 2023
In-situ installation, gallows, led
Yue Yuan describes his practice as a set of “event creations” through which he examines his personal understanding of the world and offers the visitors another perspective on their own habits and environment. Freestanding (2023) was created specifically for the exhibition project and breaks the neutrality of the museum by giving a sensorial dimension to the place. The artist replaces the fabric cord which is used between two gallows with a luminous cord and voluntarily sets his installation in a corner. The useless artwork plays with this double movement of rejection and attraction linked to its luminosity. Designed to limit our movements, the artwork directs our eyes towards an architectural detail on which we would certainly not have laid eyes in other circumstances. And yet, the luminosity and the projected shadows of the installation do not fail to illuminate and echo the imposing structure of the colonnades. Freestanding frees itself from any utilitarian constraint, like a freelance worker. The artwork also acts as the place of a simple gesture which yet abounds in derision, poetry, emancipation and questioning of established productivist systems.
Harriet Rose Morley
Camille Lemille
(1993, FR), Lives and works in Belgium
Les petites mains de la Biennale, 2022-2023, performed by Perrine Estienne
Interested in short stories, ordinary language and the influence of the Internet and digital technology on language, Camille Lemille works with the context that surrounds her, from performance to installation and publishing. Her practice is in constant relationship with language and text, gesture and sound, writing and orality: words spoken orally, transcribed and given voice by others, texts not intended to be read aloud, sampled, edited and recited. By generating shifts and discrepancies between these different linguistic materials, she seeks to reveal societal issues and question the viewer with humour. Somewhere between writing and score, performance and graphics, words and language are transformed by contact with others.
With Les Petites mains de la Biennale (2022-2023), Camille Lemille presents a book to be performed: a hollowed-out book cover, a pile of unbound leaves and a sound track scatter the anonymous words of invisible workers from the Venice Biennale around the Boverie.
Hundreds of workers are involved in the Biennale event: security guards, ticket inspectors, cleaning staff, mediators, guides, security guards, and so on. Very few are employed directly by the Biennial, which uses a large number of subcontractors. Very quickly, as we met other workers, the questions of our working conditions, who employs us, how much we are paid and how we are paid began to arise. It’s even the main topic of conversation among the Biennial’s little hands.
For two months, at the heart of the Biennial, Camille Lemille listened, asked questions and joined a group of small hands to discuss and wrestle with these issues.