.../À L'HORIZON DU GUIDON, LE PAYSAGE_temps de l'image/...

Le 22 novembre 2009, Guillaume Dimanche est parti de l'aéroport Charles de Gaulle, pour rejoindre l'aéroport de Copenhague quelques 15 jours plus tard. Car Guillaume Dimanche ne voyage pas en avion, mais à vélo. Il verra arriver les négociateurs de la 15° Conférence internationale des Nations Unies sur les changements climatiques.

" 'Paysage' désigne une partie de territoire telle que perçue pas les populations, dont le caractère résulte de l'action de facteurs naturels et/ou humains et de leurs interrelations "  

(Article 1 de la Convention européenne du paysage, rédigée à Florence, le 20 octobre 2000, signée à ce jour par 35 états membres du Conseil de l'Europe)

La première période du protocole de Kyoto, et ses objectifs en matière de réduction des gaz à effets de serre, arrive à échéance. Les négociations qui vont avoir lieu à Copenhague vont-elles inaugurer une nouvelle ère, où chacun assumera ses responsabilités en matière de pollution de notre environnement ? Le post-moderne se clôt sur l'ouverture du post-Kyoto. Changement de paradigme (on peut encore l'espérer en ce 4 décembre, ce sera peut-être plus dur à partir du 19...).

Comment les artistes perçoivent-ils ce déplacement ? Leurs pratiques s'en font-elles l'écho ? Le travail de Guillaume Dimanche amorce une voie possible d'un art post-Kyoto. Un art où les outils utilisés et les actions produites sont pensés pour avoir un impact minimum sur la sphère du vivant. Mais aussi un art qui, sans se détacher de sa valeur sensible, pointe des dysfonctionnements ou amène les consciences à s'interroger.

3 titres captés sur le blog relatant l'aventure de Guillaume D. : Morning over the Seine, Sky in the Trees, Smoke at Dawn. À travers le temps de l'image, rendre compte de la réalité du ciel : l'aube, la lumière, l'azur et la fumée des cheminées des complexes industriels. Ces images datent d'avant le départ, elles sont une sorte de pensée préfigurant le travail à venir : la captation des paysages traversés, depuis la selle du vélo. Jour après jour, ces images collectées sur la route nous montrent ces parties de territoire, quelles qu'elles soient, perçues par un cycliste voyant défiler au-delà de son guidon les résultats variés d'interrelations entre site et activités humaines.

Ces paysages post-modernes recueillent toutes les traces, traces qui apparaissent bien souvent sous la forme de déchets ou d'infrastructures mobilisant l'espace et la surface au sol, induites par nos besoins quotidiens.

.../RUN3_bis/...

Critical Run Copenhagen

Why is critic missing ?

(from the academy to the Danish parliament)

28/02/2009

Through the XXth century, running has turned out to be the most physically based of the most symbolical act. USSR understood it perfectly with the person of Emile Zatopek, who became in the 1950s the human bomb able to explode at the Western world's face. To multiplicate world records is an efficient way of catching up one's attention and signifying to others who has the power. 

"He is becoming the first man of the universal history to be able to run more than twenty kilometers in one hour. (...) This prodigious performance will not be ranked before long, one rhapsodizes. Emile, thus, juts out from the human frame, recedes the norms of physical capacities, becomes for all unattainable, no one has ever gone so far." (Jean Echenoz, Courir)

There would be an interesting study to make about the indexicality of sport world records towards states' desire of appearing as a valuable and respectable force.

Fortunately, the system sometimes gets corrupted, as it happened in august 2008. Jamaica offered an impressive performance through relay and sprint races. 'Lightning Bolt' and his fellows suddenly re-introduced a part of dream in a media show, where athletes tend to be the means of an ideological competition between states. 

Faster faster faster faster (4x100m), or longer-faster (marathon), our present productivist system seems to be only interested into exceeding human capacities. To reach what ?

"He is running, he is running without wondering anything" (J. E., Courir)

The current sport paradigm appears to be an entertaining metaphor of the world of work, amplified by the need of medias for a powerful emotional image. Submerged by the exploit or the work, we do not have space left for thinking. The artists' run, sporadic and dispersed, is one possible time to open such a space. A time-space created for a collective critic of the future of selfless human activities.

.../RUN_RUN_RUN/...

The invention of mechanics has induced an ever increasing toughening of certain human behaviours. The acceleration and systematisation of production processes have developped into human brain an appetence for holding the leadership. In any fields.

Why do sportsmen and women (fighting for the leadership is unisex) have to take drugs ? 

Why are the golden boys so fascinating (or at least used to be until a near past) ?

Why do the daily-used objects have to be always newer, smarter, brighter ?

Why does the official art aknowledged by institutions have to be always more amazing and overwhelming (Jeff Koons in Versailles castel, For the Love of God by Damien Hirst...) ?

Mechanics and the culture of the champion.

"they imposed it upon us

a constant competition

more more again and always more

faster faster and even faster

always faster" (Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, artist)

Speed, mechanical reproduction of the motion and not thinking. Running as the paradigm of the contemporary market economy, aiming at being the best. The body used as a pure mechanical force involved in the mass production and trained to even overpass this mass : running for the hypermass.

If the Emergency Room artists often run, they ideologically do it backwards. This run is an other type of run. It is not a race, against time, against others, against our own unaccomplishment. It is a social gathering, taking the opportunity of talking about various subjects, and incidentally catching the attention of passers-by, tourists, workers, consumers, providential after-fame and hyperproductive runners...

They countercurrent run, rather slowly, in the middle of the city, preferably from a symbolical place to an other one. These places are usually used as symbols for the other type of run, the one which goes onwards (but without knowing where, just on). London, subject of the talk :  "What is the role of the artist ?", from London stockexchange to Deutsch Bank, sponsor of the Frieze Art Fair. Copenhagen, talk : "Why is critic missing ?", from the King's new place (Kongens Nytorv) to the Parliament.

This run is a counter-apathy run. Checking we are still alive, in our limbs and in our minds.

.../POULPO LOVE/...

Anonymous citizen, Bologna - Italy

What happens to art if it becomes a pure commercial value ?

What if art practices, creative processes and drifting abilities are asked to fit the desire of official institutions and private corporations to show off ?

What if this embezzlement of art objects and creativity transforms into a norm, i.e. a common agreement (between producers and customers), whose use has broadened to an international level ?

What if art is turned into a digitalised value (meaning a transfer of computerized datas from a bank account to an other one), whose only aim is to stroke one's ego, on both side ?

In front of the main financial poles, which draw the current map of the dispatching of the powers (slightly threatened by a temporary crisis at the moment), a substantial offensive could consists in developping an other kind of map.

Copenhagen_Berlin_NewYork_Athens_Paris...Cairo_Napoli_Venezzia...Severobaïkalsk_Salanches...

Individuals, artists, journalists, designers, choregraphers, everywhere, from capitals to hamlets, gathering through various modes of communication, internet, galleries, training centers, mobile phones. Here, there, the diverse strata of the space, which constitute our present world, have to be investigated : from the underground cables to urban dwellings and browsing on the world wide web.

Wikipedia_Facebook_Dailymotion_Blogspot...

And building up, by the association of all the possible know-how a hybrid body. Mobile, labile, explorative : the octopus. A curious entity, moving forward into all gaps and footholes of the instances of power and sucking from these black holes its energy, for a new empowering experience. Sucking-pads tracking any appearances and sceneries, and shapeless tentacules overgoing the effective global norm.

The kisses of the octopus are transgressing the robotised normative system.

A counter-trendy art is activated.

Pulpo love is on.