Curating.info

Deadline: November 19, 2012

Description of the Residency Programme

La Galerie, a non profit Contemporary Art Centre located in the suburbs of Paris, hosts each year a foreign curator in residence for a period of three months. First organised in 2006, the aim of the residency is to put on an exhibition at La Galerie within the context of a public art centre, and to meet artists and professionals working in the contemporary art field in France.

Residency dates: 3 April – 3 July 2013
Exhibition dates: 25 May – 13 July
Deadline: application is to be emailed at the latest November 19th 2012 included.

Free accommodation is provided (including costs of electricity, gas, internet, phone and public transport) in a 65 m2 flat in the centre of Noisy-le-Sec (10 minutes by train from Paris + 15 minutes walk). The flat includes a bedroom, a living room/kitchen and a workspace. In addition there is a cellar connected to the flat, which can be used for events (projection, lecture, etc.).

A total budget of €22,000 is provided by the art centre to cover all expenses of the exhibition including artists’ and curator's travel costs, the curator's fee (€3000), transport of art works, insurance costs, production costs, publicity (invitations, flyers, poster, etc), the publication of a 16 page bilingual French/English leaflet and of a 12 page leaflet for children (graphic design and printing included).

If needed, a short visit (2 days) can be organised before the residency period in order to see the space, meet the team and do some studio visits with artists.

Application Criteria

Each candidate must submit an exhibition proposal which he/she would be able to implement with the help of La Galerie’s team. The exhibition can be a group show (5 artists maximum), a duo or solo show.

In addition, the application would be required to:
- Take into consideration the general artistic programme of La Galerie
- Have an interest in the French art scene.

To facilitate communication with the team and the public of La Galerie, the curator should speak French or English. During the residency, the curator would be required to engage as much as possible with the context of the art centre and participate actively in public talks and events organised by La Galerie. The curator would be required also to write an introductory text and accompanying texts on the works for the press release and the exhibition leaflet.

Application Procedure

Applications have to be e-mailed to the email lagaleriecac-at-gmail.com to the attention of Nathanaëlle Puaud, Residency Coordinator. Applications should contain only 2 attached files in PDF format (maximum total size: 4 MB)

1) The curator’s CV/résumé (PDF file) with his/her name, date of birth, address, phone and email contacts, list of curated exhibitions, pieces of writing, etc.

2) An exhibition proposal (PDF file) including:
- a text (maximum 2 pages) explaining the idea behind the exhibition
- a list of considered artists (even if they’re obviously not confirmed at this stage)
- a short text about each considered artist specifying how his/her work relates in the exhibition (5 lines maximum)
- one picture (reproduction of an art work or exhibition view) for each artist. In the case of a duo or a solo exhibition, please provide pictures of various works.
- ideas about public events and workshops to be organised during the exhibition.

Applications sent by postal mail will not be accepted.

For additional information please visit: http://www.noisylesec.net/index.php?id_article=6182&id_rub=galerie
Email: nathanaelle.puaud-at-noisylesec.fr.


La Galerie, Contemporary Art Centre
Nathanaëlle Puaud, Residency coordinator
1 rue Jean-Jaurès
F- 93130 Noisy-le-Sec
France
tel: +33 1 49 42 67 17
www.noisylesec.net

Happy new year! I hope your holiday was a good and restful one. I was so rested I nearly didn't get this out in time... but here it is - the latest Pick 'N Mix!

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• "Top ten" and other summary lists were thick on the ground as 2007 closed out. A few of my favourites in the art realm are New York Magazine's 2007 Culture Awards, the Guardian's Top Ten list (including a few turkeys and special awards), 2007's highlights according to the New York Times, and the top 100 cultural highlights of the year, selected by the CBC. Also, a last minute addition - check out curator Hans Ulrich Obrist's answer to the question "What have you changed your mind about?" at edge.org.
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• MC2 is a really smart project by two very interesting curators. Mark Coetzee (Miami) and Mark Clintberg (Montreal) use SMS messages to exchange information and formulate a text around art exhibitions that they saw together. Crediting writing to "MC", their shared initials, they produce probing texts on contemporary art that also question notions of authorship. The final texts are then distributed via the web on their project website.
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• I don't want to give you the impression that I am obsessed by curators producing projects in hotels, but... I couldn't resist mentioning a recent "curating contest" that took place in L'hôtel La Louisiane in Paris. Fourteen curators were each randomly assigned one room in the hotel, given a month to ponder the concept and the space, and then given ten days to mount an exhibition in that room. You can see the full list of participants and more details at the website of the gallerist who devised the contest, Olivier Robert.
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Recently, I spotted a CNN story about the Louvre "inviting slam poets in to rap about paintings". In what was surely conceived as a PR-double whammy (bring in a celebrity, create a programme that appeals to youth/urban hipsters), Toni Morrison has been invited to be a guest curator this month.

The American Nobel laureate has helped the Louvre conceive a series of lectures, readings, films, concerts, debates and slam poetry that will continue through November 29. All center around her theme "The Foreigner's Home," touching on national identity, exile and the idea of belonging.

Inviting Morrison to the museum was part of Louvre Director Henri Loyrette's outreach to the United States. [...] Loyrette, who took over at the 213-year-old institution in 2001, also has been trying to shake up France's perceptions of the role of museums. "A museum for me is not just a place, it's a place for education, a place with a social role," he said.

I've heard the term "celebrity curator" tossed around quite a bit, and usually with derision. I found this move by the Louvre (rhyming intentional) to be fairly benign, however. It seems part of a larger attempt on the part of the Louvre to fill the social role that Loyrette refers to.

The larger notion of the "celebrity curator" is far more dangerous than the Louvre example I'm citing here. The rather serious role of cultural arbiter that the curator plays ensures that there is an inevitable aura of power and, subsequently, the potential for sexiness that is congruous with the idea of celebrity, but we have to be careful: that power should also not be misused. Hence, while the Louvre's move as it stands is respectable on several levels, even though Morrison is not a formally-trained curator (she has other cultural credentials), I would cringe at handing over a similar role to most actresses or pop musicians. They have cultural credentials of a sort, too, and could expand the audience of a museum, but the danger here is a dilution of a museum's mission to the point of incomprehensibility.

Morrisson's work at the Louvre has also been reported on at the New York Times (much more in-depth article than the CNN story).

While the Pompidou tries to entice a younger generation by offering wireless internet, the hip and flashy (and, based on the rumblings of folk I know in Paris - sometimes hated) Palais de Tokyo has turned to old media to further its reach to audiences.

"France has changed, the world has changed, and we have to adapt,'' says Bruno Racine, the Pomipdou Center's 54-year-old president, in his red-walled office near the museum. "The Pompidou Center needs to renew itself, live up to the dual challenge of expanding its domestic audience and becoming a global institution.''

There is an excellent article here, that chronicles the recent troubles and triumphs of the Pompidou. The tale inevitably ends on the note of the fiscal viability of the Pompidou, with Racine saying:

"Subsidies are going to plateau,'' he says. "Clearly, we have to diversify our resources by building up visitor numbers, but also forming closer links with companies and collectors.''

Zipping on over to palaisdetokyo.com (or 13 Avenue de Président Wilson, whichever is more convenient), we see that the latest hot news item is their new magazine - yes, printed on dead trees, not on a blog or wiki! - that costs 5-7 Euros (depending on where you live) or 4.50 GBP.

Every quarter, PALAIS / outlines the expanded artistic universe of the new program and invites many contributions from diverse fields: it features images of the exhibitions presented at the Palais de Tokyo, portfolios as well as texts by art critics or philosophers, writers, footballers, artists, etc. and a "carte blanche" given to another magazine.

Throughout PALAIS / is the notion of elasticity: it pulls art toward reality and reality toward art. Are there any potential points of rupture? Where are the intersections, those unlikely places where yodeling and quantum physics meet?

It is simply an interesting study in contrasts. I would actually like to see a mash-up of these approaches - presenting the intersections where quantum physics and yodeling meet, but through a podcast, Wi-Fi portal page, or file I download from Bit Torrent. I'll be happy to see what the Pomipdou makes of dabbling in giving away Wi-Fi and other possible digital efforts, as well as what Palais de Tokyo does with the "old media" - for now.