Strates (Nicolas Bourriaud, 2008)

Le Penseur des trous (2002), Diego Perrone

Nicolas Bourriaud semble vouloir rattraper un train en marche, pour mieux rebondir. Quand une nouvelle génération d'artistes réagit aux pratiques "relationnelles" qui ont dominée les 90's (dont il a été le prophète), il lui aura suffit un déménagement à Londres pour faire un refresh the page. Le voilà concerné par l'intérêt de cette nouvelle génération envers l'héritage de la modernité. Un volte-face où il joue sans doute sa permanence, et où les candidats à la mainmise théorique sont déjà nombreux: de Jan Verwoert à JJ Charlesworth, de Vincent Pécoil à Yann Chateigné. Nicolas peut partir avec retard, mais il ne faudra pas sous-estimer son potentiel de reloading (attendez la prochaine Tate Triennial, où il devrait faire mieux que Beatrix Ruf).
Il vient d'être le commissaire de Strates, une exposition à Murcia en Espagne, qui a refusé de s'intituler biennale, formule épuisée (même si c'est sa périodicité), et reste un des projets les plus réussis de l'auteur depuis Playlist (au Palais de Tokyo). Dans les entretiens à la presse espagnole on lui a posé la question: "Quel est votre avis sur cette stratégie artistique des relectures de la Modernité, très répandue actuellement?" "Je crois que les artistes posent un regard sur le passé pour comprendre le présent, de la même façon que le futur a été l'objectif des artistes de la Modernité. Plus rien ne disparaît, et pourtant le passé peut être un continent intéressant à explorer. Dans notre monde trépidant, avec la puissance de l'industrie du divertissement et de l'amnésie, la mémoire devient quelque chose de très précieux dans l'art. Pas une nostalgie, ni un refuge dans le passé, mais un traitement créatif de l'histoire, l'histoire comme un outil de travail".
Et il se place, dans un tournant pour le moins curieux, à contre-courant de l'impasse posé par un art "documentaire" (celui de Manifesta 3, 2000; Biennale de Venise 2001, Documenta de Kassel, 2002), un "symptôme de la perte de confiance dans le pouvoir de l'art en tant que système signifiant capable de traduire notre rapport au monde avec ses moyens propres." Il défend maintenant la spécificité de la forme artistique, pas formaliste mais impliquée dans l'expérience, face à des modes de représentation inspirés des formats médiatiques.
Bon, je crois rêver.

Strates par Nicolas Bourriaud:

What if the past played an identical role for us that, in times gone by, the future played for modernists? This was the first question that came to mind when, during my first visit, I was taken aback by the layout of the Arab city, and by the numerous remains of Islamic civilisation surfacing beneath the European present. This historic sedimentation can be made out in the urban fabric, taking the form of an open-air archaeological site, in which the past and the present coexist, and echo one another. The urban reality of Murcia is the ideal place for carrying out an exhibition about this key problematic in contemporary art: many artists today borrow archaeological methods, excavating in the contemporary world or digging into History, giving their research the same attention to detail that specialists in lost civilisations do. In this case, archaeology is seen from the point of view of the method, not so much as an area of expertise, and even less as a form of nostalgia: far from extolling the past, these artists survey it, in order to better explain the present. They also apply archaeological techniques to the field of contemporaneity. The arche, the foundation, is unearthed in their work to illuminate us about ourselves. This archaeological research can then be applied to the most distant past, as well as to the most recent events in time, even up to the present moment. Time is succession; space is simultaneity. But, how can we not see that in our time, lacking in any “grand narrative,” nothing more will ever disappear into the realm of the forgotten? For the modern age, the past represented the tradition only recently replaced by what was new. For the postmodern, it served the purpose of a catalogue, or a repertoire. Today, the past is defined in territorial terms: when we travel, we do it to change temporality; in contrast, examining an art history book refers us to the options chosen by the geography of contemporary styles and techniques. Therefore, the urban reality is currently an open book in which artists can explore the stratum of the past, and the footprints of what is to come. What is certain is that the future no longer exists in the contemporary artist’s universe, except under the guise of science fiction, a literary and film genre whose origins go back to the 19th century, and which will, from now on, be located in the past. Now the notion of the future is expressed in art through “special effects”. Technology mechanically produces the narrative of our future days.
Many signs show that, within this hierarchy of times, the past has become the subject of a veritable interrogation. Our obsession with the traceability of products and destinations, the omnipresence of ecological catastrophe as a collective horizon, our mistrust of political utopias, all tend to annul any representation of the future. We live with our eyes glued to the rear-view mirror. In this new mental configuration, increased by the sensation of supersonic chaos brought on by the age we live in, the past represents the only stable and reassuring element at our disposition. ESTRATOS’’ is intended to be a reflection on the exploration of the past as terra incognita. The work of two writers, W.G. Sebald and Jorge Luis Borges, together with that of an artist, Robert Smithson, undergird the theoretical elaboration and the formulation of an inquiry, taken up and amplified by the work here presented. W.G. Sebald’s work mixes documentary and fiction, incorporating captionless black and white photographs into the body of the text. Sebald’s obsession could be summarised in the following way: the way people’s memories and past events besiege our lives and give form to the space around us. We live in an immense narrative, among ghosts: How can art decipher and reformulate this world of signs? As for Borges, we know that he liked to quote Bishop Berkeley, who asserted that time passes from the future to the past. In his story Tlön Ubar Orbis Tertius, the Argentinean writer invented a group of people who saw the world, not from a spatial point of view, but from a temporal perspective. In that way, discoveries can only exist in the past: all research is archaeology; the present is perpetual. Can we consider art today from a Borgesian point of view, that is, without historicalness? Current interest for Smithson’s work has brought the concept of the long term to the forefront of artists’ concerns. Could it be a subversive idea in our “liquid modernity” (Bauman), who puts the rotation of products and the recycling of refuse in the centre of his economy? ESTRATOS” poses these questions. Some artists respond to them through the exploration of the different layers that make up the present, while others do it by creating a space that redistributes the usual order of time. As when walking through the streets of Murcia, here we find the complexity of the questions raised by the persistence of memory in a modern time, tired of its flight forward.

LARA ALMARCEGUI
BERND & HILLA BECHER
BLEDA Y ROSA
JUAN CRUZ
VERNE DAWSON
MARK DION
JIMMIE DURHAM
CYPRIEN GAILLARD
ILANA HALPERIN
JOACHIM KOESTER
MARK LOMBARDI
ALLAN MC COLLUM
PAUL NOBLE
PAULINA OLOWSKA
DIEGO PERRONE
ABRAHAM POINCHEVAL & LAURENT TIXADOR
MARJETICA POTRC
GREGOR SCHNEIDER
EVE SUSSMAN & THE RUFUS CORPORATION
KEITH TYSON