SÉANCES (SESSIONS)
2012

Crédac (project associated with La Triennale 2012-Intense Proximité)
Curatrice : Claire le Restif

A show in the form of an exhibition.
An exhibition in the form a show.
Fragment and incompleteness
as the principles of a relation to the world.
A story in the form of images and sculptures.
A montage of heterogeneous elements,
assembled by the spectator.
A stage set/landscape to move through.

Séances is a narrative that takes the form of a space that is at once physical and mental, based on a practice of articulation (of forms, ideas and sensations) and on the idea of the fragment as the fundamental principle of the relation to the world. In a bluish semi-darkness, various elements without predefined meaning or organization (sculptures, films, texts, sounds, but no live actor or event) compose a stage/landscape to be moved around in, for a set time of 40 minutes. The combination of formal elements, a space, a time frame and an audience constitute this proposition as a show. The predefined, limited duration of this show, the large quantity of elements presented, their simultaneity and their specific temporalities, all ordain that the reception of these forms will be fragmented, affirming and exacerbating its heterogeneity, its incompleteness and its singularity for each spectator. The fragment is both one of the main themes and a structural element of Séances. It is a theme in that it posits and explores the notion of incompleteness as the very essence of our relation to knowledge, to the world, to other beings, to objects and phenomena. It is a motif inasmuch as each film, text or sculpture inSéances deliberately flaunts its fragmentariness. And it is a structural element because spectators cannot have access to all the elements put before them. Séances is an object with a non-predetermined meaning : it is the spectator who edits it together during the 40 minutes of the experience, using the narrative potential of certain forms just as much as the disjunctions or formal similarities. Made deliberately too short for spectators to take in all the elements they see in front of them, this duration amplifies and underscores the importance of the fragment principle and the onus placed on the spectator to choose among what is offered. Each viewer is invited to use the methods of editing, police investigation or psychoanalysis in order to constitute, whether by digression, free association or correlation, their own global form. While of course the spectator is never just a passive receiver of the forms put out by the artist, but plays an active part in constructing the meaning of a work, in Séances this active role is given exemplary form, putting the spectator’s engagement with the work on the same level as the artist’s. That said, far from being limited to this single idea, Séances is intended above all to be a plastic experience in which the affirmation of the visual power of forms is as important as the processes of their organization and reception.

This project benefited from the support of the national Fondation nationale des arts graphiques et plastiques (FNAGP), as well as from the CNAP National Center for the Visual Arts (support for the development of an artistic search).