Papers by Vanessa Desclaux
David Lamelas Elliptic structures, 2011
Essay on David Lamelas' exhibition for COMMA 36 at Bloomberg Space, which I curated. The essay fo... more Essay on David Lamelas' exhibition for COMMA 36 at Bloomberg Space, which I curated. The essay focuses on the central work in the exhibition, titled "Connection of three spaces", installation initially made in 1966 at the Instituto di Tella in Buenos Aires.
Volume, issue 2, 2011
Art best intervenes within everyday life when it interrupts knowledge and the consensual construc... more Art best intervenes within everyday life when it interrupts knowledge and the consensual construction of discourse, opening up paths of desire, investigating how imagination has the ability to transform and constantly re-invent our relationships to everyday objects and practices, including our use of ordinary language. I sought to formalize this idea of the interruption carried out by artistic practices through the curation of a show titled "Stutter" 1 and this was when I first delved into the work of Anna Barham. Her use of language grasped my attention: starting from carefully chosen groups of words, she develops arborescent structures based on anagrams. Taking the form of drawings (hand-written or made using stamps) or digital animation, these anagrammatic fields encompass a practice of drawing, writing, and later performance through Anna's reading aloud of entire texts or sections of her pieces. L'intervention la plus intéressante de l'art dans le quotidien réside dans sa manière de perturber le champ du savoir et d'interrompre la construction consensuelle du discours, dessinant d'autres lignes de désir, explorant la capacité de l'imagination à transformer et constamment réinventer nos relations aux objets et pratiques, dont fait partie le langage ordinaire. J'ai cherché à mettre en forme cette idée de l'interruption mise en oeuvre par les pratiques artistiques à travers la conception d'une exposition intitulée « Stutter » 1 (en français, « bégaiement ») et j'ai alors porté une attention particulière au travail de l'artiste Anna Barham. Son usage du langage a provoqué ma curiosité : partant d'un groupe de mots choisis avec attention, elle développe des structures arborescentes basées sur des anagrammes. Prenant la forme de dessins-faits à la main ou à l'aide de tampons-ou d'animations, ces champs anagrammatiques englobent autant une pratique du dessin que de l'écriture, mais aussi de la performance puisqu' Anna lit en public des textes entiers ou des extraits de ses pièces.
Problèmes de type grec, journal d'exposition, La Galerie, Noisy-le-Sec, 2015
Film 16 mm couleur transféré sur dvd, muet version claire, version sombre, 2 × 4' Courtesy de l'a... more Film 16 mm couleur transféré sur dvd, muet version claire, version sombre, 2 × 4' Courtesy de l'artiste Matthieu Clainchard Casquettes et fond de pots, 2015 Socles en bois, roulettes, peinture, 166 × 90 × 90 cm, 76 × 72 × 48 cm Courtesy de l'artiste. Production La Galerie, Noisy-le-Sec La permanence Tous les lundis de 10h à 13h, la directrice reçoit sur rendezvous. La lecture, l'écoute Tous les vendredis de 17h à 18h, lectures à voix haute par l'équipe Un institut métaphorique Métaphores, immunité, corps, connaissance, institutions, 2015 Notes repositionnables, 347 × 600 cm Courtesy des artistes. Production La Galerie, Noisy-le-Sec Matthieu Clainchard Casquettes et fond de pots, 2015 Socles en bois, roulettes, peinture, 172 × 130 × 80 cm Courtesy de l'artiste. Production La Galerie, Noisy-le-Sec
Empty stages, crowded flats. Performativity as curatorial strategy. , 2017
Cérémonies, MER paperkunsthalle, 2021
Journal d'exposition "La langue de ma bouche", Jean-Charles de Quillacq et Hedwig Houben, La Galerie, Noisy-le-Sec, 2017
Journal des Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers, 2015
Yael, this is a strange fact: although I have known you for about nine years now, and we have had... more Yael, this is a strange fact: although I have known you for about nine years now, and we have had several opportunities to work together, I never wrote anything about your work. This is exciting, and yet challenging: because I am dealing with a lot of memories, an accumulation of ideas, of texts, of moments shared, and of works I saw. I now experience the desire to think about this past, attempt to recover certain memories, and work through the stuff I kept in boxes and files (texts, books, emails, exhibition leaflets, invitation cards, DVDs with portfolios and videos, scripts and scores). I want to think about the changes that I have undergone within this period, and attempt to show that our relationship has played an important role in my own path, through life and work. I will make some references to texts by André Lepecki and Brian Massumi that you had asked the students to read in the context of the workshop I invited you to lead in Bourges. They overlap a great deal with the texts from the reading group. I take on Massumi's advice in his introduction to the work Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002) and I intend to enjoy writing this text very much, indulging in exploring again important aspects of your practice in connection with the philosophical, ethical and poetic fragments that emerged in the context of our repeated encounters.
Sillages critiques
Ce texte introduit l’œuvre de Natalie Czech, artiste d’origine allemande, dont le travail plastiq... more Ce texte introduit l’œuvre de Natalie Czech, artiste d’origine allemande, dont le travail plastique s’inscrit au croisement de la pratique photographique et de l’ecriture poetique. Czech invite depuis plusieurs annees les spectateurs a partager son attachement a des textes poetiques dont elle s’empare. Prenant ces poemes comme point de depart, elle invente des dispositifs par le biais desquels elle produit de nouveaux textes et de nouvelles images dans le contexte de son travail photographique. Vanessa Desclaux envisage ici la methodologie mise en place par l’artiste et son deploiement a travers differentes series telles que Hidden Poems, A Small Bouquet et Il Pleut. Le texte considere les relations singulieres que l’artiste revele et met en scene entre les champs de l’art et de la poesie a l’epoque moderne et contemporaine. L’auteur y precise egalement la specificite de l’utilisation du medium photographique dans la production de cet ensemble d’œuvres recentes (2010-2012).
My research intends to critically expose the political, economic, and ethical conditions in which... more My research intends to critically expose the political, economic, and ethical conditions in which curatorial practice is operating in the current context. I attempt to examine the question of authorship within curatorial practice, in order to challenge the distinction between an administrative, scholarly practice carried out in the name of an institution and an authorial and entrepreneurial practice that is exemplary of late capitalism. I thus intend to challenge the figure of the curator that has been disciplined by and is expected to function within current political and economic conditions. I will endeavour to disrupt the stable roles and functions associated with the figure of the curator and instead uncover multiple subject positions, which collapse professional templates and fail traditional oppositions between activity and passivity. I therefore begin with a reflection on the condition of spectatorship inherent to curatorial practice, and propose that the curator is the quint...
Books by Vanessa Desclaux
La syncope dans la performance et les arts visuels, 2015
Les Pléiades. 30 ans de création dans les Fonds régionaux d'art contemporain, 2014
The Sensible Stage: Staging and the Moving Image, 2017
The Sensible Stage is a collection of essays exploring the use of live performance and moving ima... more The Sensible Stage is a collection of essays exploring the use of live performance and moving image in contemporary art practice. It engages with a global phenomenon in which elements from theatre and cinema are integrated into art as forms of archive, questioning the concept of materiality and undermining the boundaries between what we understand as 'live' or 'mediated', the 'body' or the 'image'. Opening with a discussion between prominent philosopher Alain Badiou and Elle During, this book is grounded in the practice it analyses, bringing together a unique mixture of theoretical, creative and discursive reflections on the meeting of stage and screen.
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Papers by Vanessa Desclaux
Books by Vanessa Desclaux