Le Stade des Sirènes

Le Stade des Sirènes

April 3, 2010 -  May 2, 2010

A project by Etienne Chambaud in collaboration with Vincent Normand.

Kadist Art Foundation is pleased to present Le Stade des Sirènes, an exhibition by Etienne Chambaud in the framework of Permanent Exhibition, Temporary Collections,a theoretical project by Vincent Normand.
The Sirens' Stage/Le Stade des Sirènes/Lo stato delle sirene is developed by the David Roberts Art Foundation in London, Kadist Art Foundation in Paris and Nomas Foundation in Rome.
The three exhibitions,interpreted in a different language almost simultaneously at each Foundation, are based on mechanisms of writing and transcription. Translation should be considered both the medium and the shared language of the whole project. The project takes its title from the mythological sirens' song which invents itself in the ear of its addressee. Here Le Stade des Sirènes is conceived as a group of « written objects »: absent but described, motionless but translated, unique but repeated, mute but transcribed. Excluded from the present time, they only exist in the moment of their transmission into language. Radically detached from the realm of authenticity, the three
exhibitions each attempt to frame a series of exclusions, separations and procedures of dispossession. Promising to produce its own absence, as well as the absence of the two other exhibitions' experiences, Le Stade des Sirènes is a misunderstanding in construction, a negative space failing to be circumscribed. Le Stade des Sirènes is made up of an installation of Figures, a group of named, empty plinths (Le Récif), which acts as a space from which are emitted layers of speech and text. Actors occasionally interact with this space, reading, memorising and rehearsing the fragments of a script. Sometimes Le Récif remains silent. A group of framed Instruction Pieces hung on the wall outlines a series of gestures and acts. These instructions change over the course of the exhibition. A writer (Le Copiste), who is present at all times, transcribes the evolution of the exhibition day after day. The Foundation's collection is included through a series of photographs of its storage, in which all crates are named (Figures de Réserve).
A written contract, drawn up by a lawyer,outlines the conditions for the exchange and the conservation of copies of sculptures exchanged between the three Foundations' collections (The Exchange (The Horse, the Cobblestone, Above the Weather). Le Stade des Sirènes is a collection of fragmentary narratives, playing with accumulations and disappearances, survivals and hauntings.

The exhibition stages the oblivion and the burial of its original sources, meanings and forms under its own echoes, misunderstandings, partial interpretations and incomplete memories. Between mute traces and promises of a speech act, polyphony and cacophony, transcription and oral tradition, the remains of the song of thesse « sirens » stand for fossils organising their
own archaeology.

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