Category Archives: architecture

Lecture: Le Cinquième Département: Fragments @ Centre Pompidou

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Conference Delphine Bedel, Le Cinquième Département, Fragments
With Dexter Sinister (Stuart Bailey and David Reinfurt) and Valérie Pihet (École des Arts Politiques, Paris, directed by Bruno Latour).
31 October 2010, 3 pm

A discussion of the place of research and of oral transmission within the institution, on the basis of historical and contemporary examples. Delphine Bedel revisits the experience and the legacy of the short-lived but crucially important Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques (1985-95). Under the directorship of Pontus Hulten and then Daniel Buren, this institute was once envisaged as a research department for the Centre Pompidou, the so-called ’5th Department’. Delphine Bedel traces back the history of the Institut to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Moderna Museet in Stoklholm in the 60′s, and the influence of artists close to Pontus (Duchamp, Tinguely, Niki de St Phalle), and graphic designer and museum director Willem Sandberg. The transmission of experience, the ‘studio situation’ and breakthrough exhibitions like ‘She’, ‘Dylaby’ and ‘Bewogen/Bewegen’ will be evoked, and put in relation with contemporary practices and new education projects. The discussion will be followed by a screening of Robert Filliou‘s ‘Teaching and Learning as Performing Arts, Part 2′, Video University (1979).

Exhibition Fun Palace 21 – 31.10.2010, Centre Pompidou, Paris
Curated by Tiphanie Blanc, Yann Chateigné Tytelman & Vincent Normand.
Display by Stéphane Barbier Bouvet.
With Lars Bang Larsen, Delphine Bedel, Étienne Chambaud, Céline Condorelli, Dexter Sinister, Dolphins into the Future, Luca Frei, Karl Holmqvist, Junior Aspirin Records, Monster Island, Sarah Pierce, Michael Stevenson, Camille de Toledo and Tris Vonna Michell.

Informations:
Centre Pompidou, Les Rendez-Vous du Forum

Fun Palace
The Forum, subterranean womb of the primitive utopia of the Centre Pompidou, is to house a temporary structure developed in collaboration with a team of artists, publishers, musicians, labels, writers and curators of varying backgrounds. In this space once open to the city, this mechanical arena entirely dedicated to the experience of the present, Fun Palace offers a series of explorations at the margins of the past and present activity of the institution, of its hidden dimensions, in the gaps severing the heterogeneous discourses and acts that have inhabited the place.

The title refers to Cedric Price and Joan Littlewood’s never realised project for a mobile and shapeshifting Fun Palace (1961), which served as a theoretical model and working title for the Centre Pompidou. The present Fun Palace attempts a form of discontinuous transmission, organised in ten sequences, each offered to a different guest, invited without preconditions to examine this archive and to come up with a secret history or fictional rewriting.

Oral narratives, alternative legends, and forgotten or immaterial archives sketch an invisible and fragmentary history of the Centre. This mode of interpretation looks to the traces of unfinished experiments and of abandoned ideas that still haunt the institution. A prism that disperses the written history of the Centre into an ensemble of divergent elements, the Fun Palacespeaks to that history’s blind spots and dead zones. Drawing on the shades of history and collective myth, the exhibition invents its deficits, putting into question the suspension of history that Swiss sociologist Albert Meister called – in a science-fiction story written in 1976, as the Centre began to rise from the ground – ‘The so-called utopia of the Centre Beaubourg’.

With appearances by Vito Acconci, Joseph Beuys, Daniel Buren, David Byrne, Louis Capet, Henri Chopin, Le Cinquième Département, Guy Debord, Destroy All Monsters / Cary Loren, Marcel Duchamp, Robert Filliou, Allen Ginsberg, John Giorno, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville, Brion Gysin, Jonathan Horowitz, Pontus Hulten, Allan Kaprow, Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy, Mauro Lanza, Lefevre Jean Claude, Le Mur du Fond / Jean-François Bergez, David Markey, Gordon Matta-Clark, Albert Meister, Bruce Nauman, Giovanni Passannante, Raymond Pettibon, Cedric Price, Eliane Radigue, The Residents, Jean Rouch, Raymond Roussel, Philippe Seguin, Leslie Thorton, Lawrence Weiner and Frank Zappa.

Lecture: The Public School: ‘Beyond Paradise’ @ Wiels

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‘Beyond Paradise’ Talk and Film Screening with Delphine Bedel & Ayako Yoshimura.Introduction by Matthieu Laurette. Screening ‘Celebration’ By Quirine Racké & Helena Muskens (2005, 55′)

‘The […] ambivalence of tourism, which also applies to our world in general, is reality and its copy at a time when copies are increasingly more realistic and reality is increasingly penetrated by the illusion of fiction‘ (Marc Augé)

Delphine Bedel and Ayako Yoshimura will present the two-part project ‘Beyond Paradise’ -an exhibition and film programme- they curated at the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam and Maison Descartes – Institut Français des Pays-Bas in 2008. A selection of film excerpts from the project will be presented, followed by the screening of the documentary ‘Celebration’ by Racké & Muskens. Delphine Bedel will introduce her last publication ‘All that is solid melts into air, Notes on Tourism’ (Rotterdam, 2008), a collective research investigating the relation between tourism and politics of memory.

‘Beyond Paradise’ addresses the cultural and social changes that have altered our perspectives on tourism. As sociologist John Urry described in his breakthrough publication The Tourist Gaze, visual culture is central to the tourist experience. It could also be stated that the tourist industry, global mobility and media consumption and especially their abundant visual culture shape our vision of contemporary society. Tourist image production and narratives, as we know them from travel brochures, postcards, advertisements, films, are addressed in the works presented. They reflect on the construction of expectations, experiences and the social imaginary of places evoked by the ubiquitous and pervasive culture of tourism we are living in nowadays. ‘Beyond Paradise’ investigates modes of representation and visibility, starting from the mass production of images – a scheme central to the leisure industry – and the idealized imagery of places, and moves away from the familiar Tourist Gaze to construct unexpected fictional or personal narratives. The promises of these idealistic and seductive images are appropriated and eventually shifted in the works presented , to reveal other realities, and take us beyond paradise in order to question one of the greatest fictions of our times: that of tourism

The film ‘Celebration’ shows six couples in search of utopia. They are the residents of Celebration; the latest version of the American Dream, built in Florida by Walt Disney. Walt Disney always said that dreams can come true. Is Celebration a dream come true in a world gone wrong?

WIELS, Center for Contemporary Art, Brussels. Saturday 20.03.2010, 16:00

Delphine Bedel is curator, artist and writer (http://blog.delphinebedel.com), Ayako Yoshimura is artist and curator. They are both based in Amsterdam. The exhibition ‘Beyond Paradise’ included works by Bik Van der Pol, Patricia Esquivias, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Mustafa Hulusi, Arnout Killian, Matthieu Laurette, Sascha Pohle, Lisl Ponger, Erkan Özgen & Sener Özmen. The film programme presented a selection of documentary, short films and videos addressing various perspectives on tourism in diverse geographical and political contexts. It featured films by Quirine Racké & Helena Muskens, Kamal Aljafari, Olivo Barbieri, Mounir Fatmi, Kwang-Ju Son, Bik Van der Pol and Kai-Ting Lin.

Photography: The Last Session

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18 September – 18 October 2009
De Brakke Ground, Amsterdam

Presentation of the road movie ‘From the Sidelines – A journey on Route 66′, and a selection of photographs from my journey to America.

THE LAST SESSION: focuses on the aesthetics of endism. Endism in our culture embraces many forms, and partially touches everyone’s life in its connection with death. Endism is an attitude as much as a myth, a sense of foreboding as much as a given story, an orientation to ultimate concerns as much as a commitment to a specific end time narrative. Endism describes the future location and deepest yearnings of the self. Endism is process and vision. It cuts against all logic, is usually mystical, and may become magical. The exhibition will bring together the work of an international selection of artists whose work relates to the broadly interpreted theme of Endism.

With Tomas Adolfs, Stephan Balleux, Paulien Barbas, Delphine Bedel, Staffan Björk, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Fia Cielen, Christine Clinckx, Martha Colburn, Orpheu de Jong, Hadassah Emmerich, Fienden, Andrea Galvani, Tony Garifalakis, Joris Ghekiere, ioulex, Experimental Jetset, Gert Jan Kocken, Matthias Kreutzer, Alexandra Leykauf, Jen Liu, Liesbeth Marit, Kalle Mattsson, Oskar Nilsson, Nick Oberthaler, Dear Reader, Rafael Rozendaal, Kalle Runeson, Etta Säfve, Steve Schepens, Jens Schildt, Seher Shah, Helmut Stallaerts, Tarja Szaraniec, Monica Tormell, Dennis Tyfus, Philippe Vandenberg, Filip Vervaet, Chad VanGaalen, Anne Wenzel and Fabio Wuytack.

THE LAST SESSION: An exhibition, a cinema, a publication.
Curated by Jan Van Woensel in collaboration with The Session.
Vlaamse Cultuurhuis De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam
18 September – 18 October 2009

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Photography: From The Sidelines – A Journey on Route 66

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16 May – 30 august 2009
Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden

Crossing America during the first 100 days of Obama’s presidency.
A photographic essay.

Although the Route 66 is known to be a scenic road and a celebrated myth, Route 66 is most of all about the people who live and work along it, and who keep it’s unique spirit alive. Created in 1927, the route was for over half a century the main access from East to West, crossing 8 states. Decommissioned in 1984, Route 66 officially disappeared, to be replaced by new Interstate Highways. This created a great strain for the economy along the old road and its inhabitants. A renewed interest in the recent years for the Route’s rich patrimony and it’s legacy, central to the American history, is now contributing to a regaining popularity, transforming the Route itself into a tourist destination. Drawing a parallel with the emergence of Plymouth in the late 19th century as a tourist destination, as seen in Burbank’s photographs, Delphine Bedel initiated a new research project entitled ‘From The Sidelines’.

Crossing the country by car for a month together with the singer-songwriter Luke Nyman, during the first 100 days of Obama’s presidency, Bedel photographed the stunning scenery, the eclectic architecture and the people, and Nyman played in many places along the road. Together they also filmed and recorded stories from the ‘Children of the Mother Road’: a cowboy’s wife, motel workers, war veterans, artists, musicians and historians, all had stories to tell. From the Dust Bowl years to the Credit Crunch, from the New World to the Trail of Tears, (the forced exile of the Cherokee Nation), from the Grand Canyon to the ”Magnificent Mile’ of drive-thru chain stores, unexpected perspectives unfold along the journey across Obama’s America, and reflect upon a country in a disrupted present.

Bedel’s photographic essay an their road movie are presented in this exhibition. Luke will be performing at the opening and on the 4th of July, together with the Travlin’ Tunes Tour. This project was commissioned in the frame of the exhibition ‘Holland Mania’ at the Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden. A publication will be released on that occasion, with a text by Rachel Esner. A selection of 136 prints of the 19th century Burbank’s photographs will also be presented on that occasion. These images are part of the collection o the Library of Leiden.

The travelogue of Delphine Bedel and Luke Nyman on the Mother Road will be online soon at blog.fromthesidelines.org

In the frame of the exhibition ‘Holland Mania’
16 May – 30 august 2009
Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden
Oude Singel 28-32
www.lakenhal.nl

Workshop: Multipistes Parties

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13th of January 2009
Meneer de Wit, Amsterdam

Multipistes Parties: 13-17 January 2009
Exhibitions, documentation, debate, film, readings, artist-led workshops
Full program

MultiPistes is a collaborative project featuring artistic productions, site-specific events and publications. Avoiding geopolitical considerations, MultiPistes is based on different artists’ strategies and their relation to each other within an international context. A common thread that runs through all the projects is the desire to creatively impact upon and within day-to-day living. The workshop is the inaugural event of Parties, a five-days series of exhibitions, documentation, debate, film, readings, of the various MultiPistes projects.

Workshop by Latifa Laâbissi

The choreographer Latifa Laâbissi  will lead the workshop  at Meneer de Wit on the 13th of January 2009. Latifa Laâbissi uses contemporary dance to question notions of space through the body’s perception and its place in an environment. During the workshop, she will explore with the participants many variations on this theme, such as: the body as the central figure in a space, the body revealing a space, the body in crisis with a space, or the body in empathy with a space. The participants can ‘play’ with all those hypotheses, articulate theoretical questions, be critical, share documentation, observe each other, and even practice….

The workshop is developed in relation to her project Habiter, in which Latifa Laâbissi danced solo performances in private spaces of people in Morocco at the end of 2007. Photographs of Latifa Laâbissi’s performances can be seen at Meneer de Wit. The workshop is aiming at participants who have a professional or personal interest in topics relating to space, architecture, urban planning, living (habiter), and the body.

“Trained in France then with the Cunningham studio in New York, Latifa Laâbissi (FR/MAR) invests the choreographic field by combining various processes and artistic disciplines. Since 1990, she works as dancer and choreographer. She collaborated as interpret for Jean-Claude Gallotta, Thierry Baë, Georges Appaix, Loïc Touzé, Jennifer Lacey and Nadia Lauro, Boris Charmatz. She creates in 2006 the solo Self portrait camouflage. With ‘Histoire par celui qui la raconte’, currently presented in Beaubourg, Latifa Laâbissi proposes to us a group piece with an heterogeneous account in which action is in crisis, a space in the process of off-centring and threatened stability.”

Contact Amsterdam: Fatima Harhour and Delphine Bedel

Teaching & Lecture: Tourisme – Atelier Recherche et Creation

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Mercredi 7 Janvier 2009, Conférence 14.00-17.30
Jeudi 8 janvier 2009, ARC Tourisme, 10.00- 17.00
Ecole Régionale des Beaux-Arts de Besançon

Conference
All that is solid melts into air, Notes on Tourism est une réflexion sur le travail de l’artiste et de l’auteur Delphine Bedel. Parcs d’attractions et monuments, campings et stations balnéaires, ses photographies et écrits documentent des sites touristiques dans  divers contextes. Bedel questionne la représentation visuelle des loisirs, de l’architecture, et des artefacts culturels. Ce livre explore trois destinations touristiques controversées dont l’identité, l’usage, et la signification se sont transformes radicalement au siecle dernier : une statue de Lénine monumentale, enterrée dans une forêt de Berlin, la complexe architectural nazi de Prora, et le paysage voisin des falaises de craie sur Rügen comme peint par Caspar David Friedrich. Le tourisme et les loisirs influencent notre mode de vie et reflètent les changements économiques, sociaux, et culturels de notre société. Le rôle des images est central a l’expérience du tourisme. Quel la relation entre architecture et identité ? Qui possède le passé? Quelle est l’imagination romantique de la nature par rapport au tourisme aujourd’hui? Utilisant sa recherche photographique comme point de départ, Delphine Bedel a invité des auteurs des disciplines diverses à contribuer a ce livre, proposant ainsi des perspectives historiques et critiques inattendues sur les relations entre tourisme et politique de mémoire.
(Auteurs: Delphine Bedel, Francesco Bernardelli, Rachel Esner, Bruno Latour, Marco Pasi, Olivier Rolin, Thibaut de Ruyter. Photographies: Delphine Bedel. Editeur: Episode Publishers, Rotterdam 2008)

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