1972, a proposal by Le Bureau

1972

A proposal by Le Bureau/

Saâdane Afif
Gaëlle Boucand
Olaf Breuning
Martin Creed
Al Madani & Akram Zaatari
Aurélien Mole
Jonanthan Monk
Tony Regazzoni
Kelley Walker
Raphaël Zarka


Replying to DRASH's invitation to take part in a DVD edition including various interviews of curators - broadcasted during the exhibition "Curating Degree Zero Archive" (June 16 - July 8, 2007 - Point Ephémère, Paris), Le Bureau / proposes the film of the exhibition 1972 , which will be shot at the Kadist Art Foundation in Paris. The filmed exhibition presents a selection of works from the Foundation, as well as works by several young French artists.

The context of these interviews specified by the association DRASH consisted in inviting curators to select and comment an ensemble of reproductions of artworks in order to evoke their own curating practice. Because it is a collective, Le Bureau/ chose to speak differently about its practice by producing a project that would speak for itself, a « classical » exhibition thought specifically for the DVD support and the context of the interview.

Inspired by « F for Fake » by Orson Welles, Le Bureau/ chose to concieve a true/fake documentary about a true/fake exhibition: true, because the exhibition will really be shown at the Kadist Art Foundation, and fake because the latter is supposed to take place at the beginning of the 70s thanks to diverse subtleties. Actually, the contemporary artworks are to create a time discrepancy in terms of the seventies: the anachronisms will reside in the media or the subjects of the works. The film is shot in super 8 with a public dressed in seventies-like clothes.

The gaps produced in the documentary between the contemporary nature of the artworks and the historical discrepancy are a way to reflect, from a different point of view and through the film, on the notion of archive, its truth and its constitution, but also on its capacity to translate: making visible something that we are no longer able to see. The film also questions the function of the curator in the collective unconscious: the one who discovers the new tendencies of art.


Special thanks to DRASH for their invitation, to the Kadist Art Foundation for loaning the works.
This DVD will be integrated to the archives of the Curating Degree Zero Archive.
The shooting will take place on August 11th, 2007 at 6pm at the Kadist Art Foundation - 19bis / 21 rue des Trois Frères, 75018 Paris - a small briefing session is planned at 5pm. A seventies dress code is required.

Le Bureau/ is a group of curators based in Paris, whose aim is to question the very form of the exhibition as a medium. The notion of collective curating is the group's founding principle, generating the encounter of the different specialties and personalities of its members, allowing the production of exhibitions based on multiple and relative interpretations. The exhibition as a medium is considered as a mediation tool in which each protocol reflects the goals of each project, allowing the works to be examined outside of a didactic relation to the exhibition.

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