12 Sep 2010

Biennale de Belleville, Paris

Belleville Biennale / 1st edition
From September 10 to October 23, 2010

A new contemporary art event is taking shape in eastern Paris for the coming autumn season : the Belleville Biennale. From September 10 to October 23, this history-laden multicultural neighbourhood which has known many radical urban changes over the past few years will become an area for novel artistic experiments with an eye on the national and international scene.

Group and solo shows, performances and various artists' interventions will be held in venues public and private alike, as well as extra muros, beyond the arrondissement : in public places, streets and gardens. They are being toted, along with lectures, as so many attempts aimed at upsetting habits and customs associated with being in and going to contemporary art sites.

Started by a group of Belleville-based curators and art critics, this new Biennale model, a hands-on and neighbourhood affair, intends above all to give voice to contemporary activities with all the complexity of phenomena to do with an urban populace. By urging people to stroll about, it tries to trace out new itineraries in the city, thus helping visitors to rediscover a territory, through new ways of understanding contemporary art.

For this first Biennale, the Pavillon Carré de Baudoin, the Maison des Métallos, the Antenne du Plateau/Frac Ile-de-France, Café au Lit, Contexts and the Ecole Prép'art are all hosting the event. Many contemporary art galleries established in the neighbourhood in the wake of the creation of Le Plateau and the ephemeral adventure of La Générale will also take part in the Biennale : Marcelle Alix, Balice Hertling, Bugada & Cargnel, Crèvecœur, Gaudel de Stampa, Jocelyn Wolff, Sémiose, and Suzanne Tarasiève. A gallery visit is planned in October during the private tour of the Fiac galleries, and several artists represented by them are included in the Biennale's specific projects.

The Pavillon Carré de Baudoin will be the Biennale's centre of gravity. This building, constructed in the XVIIIth century, will host an exhibition emphasizing the similarities and cahoots between artistic approaches and demographic ebbs and flows. Entitled Solde migratoire [Migration Report], it will present, in some 400 m2/4,300 sq.ft., about thirty works by fifteen international artists such as Dove Allouche, Kader Attia, Stéphane Calais, Hamish Fulton, Camille Henrot, and Jorge Pedro Nunez (installations, videos, photographs, paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings).

A double video screening by the brazilian artist Caetano Dias and the chinese artist Zhenchen Liu is programmed for the Nuit Blanche on October 2 at the Maison des Métallos as part of the Fabula rasa project. This old industrial factory dating from the XIXth century, now a cultural centre since the 2000's, will thus become, for a night's span, the forum of new urban narratives.

The Biennale is associating with the Antenne du Plateau to present the project of the cuban artist Tania Bruguera, Capitalisme générique, consisting in a programme of readings in the neighbourhood's public places, aimed at producing lines of thinking about the notion of capitalism today. The Antenne showcase will also be housing a new work by the artist Wilfrid Almendra.

The Hamburg-based artist Jochen Lempert is taking over the apartment of the 'place des fêtes' at Café au Lit. The exhibition, entitled Migrations, will show photographs based in particular on a series taken in the Buttes Chaumont park. Also worth noting : the original show Le Cartel de Belleville, presenting notices of works by a dozen artists being accommodated specifically for the event at Bugada & Cargnel from October 9 (in the storage).

The Ecole Prép'art, for its part, is putting on a culinary performance by Jean-Claude Chianale (a graphic and chromatic buffet), on the evening of September 11.

Several projects are also being shown extra muros : exhibitions, performances, film screenings…

As from October 9, the works in the exhibition Street painting (La peinture à la rue) will take over the public place around the métro Jourdain. Just at a time when tagging and graffiti art are finding a niche in art galleries and at the Grand Palais, contemporary painting, for its part, is coming back to the street. The aim of this show is actually to hand canvases, performed paintings and all manner of pictorial and painterly gesture to the street test, for a good week, at best, and one day, at worst.

Julien Berthier will unveil a bronze sculpture made from an assemblage of objects tossed onto roadways, the outcome of his project Monstre. Benoît-Marie Moriceau has come up with a project following on from a forward-looking work involving locations in the neighbourhoods during the summer.

The australian collective A Constructed World is presenting, in the garden of the Pavillon Carré de Baudoin and around : Speakeasy Medicine Show, three nomadic, multi-facetted events dealing with words, transmission, distribution, song, groups and cooking, while the polish artist Joanna Warsza, operating under the label 'Laura Palmer Foundation' introduces a line of thinking about the very hub and nub of the Biennale : Belleville vaut bien une Biennale [Belleville really deserves a Biennale].

Visitors will also become actors in projects. By taking part in Take a lift on the East Side, they are invited to an interview for the period of a 'lift' in a limousine in Belleville, from one Biennale venue to another. For the performance Traduire les enseignes by the artist Lee Show-Chun, they may also set off, as part of a guided tour, to discover the hidden meaning of Chinese signs and other small posters put up by Chinese shopkeepers in Belleville. The Biennale is also joining up, incidentally, with the galerie Marcelle Alix to produce a project by the artists' twosome Louise Hervé & Chloé Maillet.

On the evening of September 14, the Biennale offers visitors a chance to discover, preview-like, and for the first time in France : Double Take, the fascinating full feature movie by the artist Johan Grimonprez. Using the figure of the double in Hitchcock films, this montage of archives examines the history of the Cold War in relation to the tragedy of September 11 2001 (on general release on September 22). His cult film Dial History is being screened in the first part of the evening. A film by Ariane Michel is also being screened at the Buttes Chaumont on September 13.

Lectures and discussions will be organized throughout the event at the Auditorium du Pavillon Carré de Baudoin on the theme La condition urbaine.

The Palais de Tokyo and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris are joining hands to organize l'Université d'été de Dynasty at the Pavillon Carré de Baudouin for this first Biennale, on September 11. This day of meetings, as an extension of the exhibition Dynasty, will bring together heads of institutions, directors of art schools, gallery owners and directors, curators, critics and artists, to discuss the Fabrique d'artistes and the challenges facing contemporary art.

www.labiennaledebelleville.fr


Opening September 9 at 6:30 pm at the Pavillon Carré de Baudoin
Press visit at 3 pm (micro performance by Lee Show-Chun at 4:30 pm - métro Pyrénées)


The Belleville Biennale is an event devised by the Association Place 2 B chaired by Gilles Drouault.

General curator
Patrice Joly

Associate curators
Muriel Enjalran / Judicaël Lavrador / Claire Moulène

External associate curators
Andrea Weisbrod and Jens Emil Sennewald / Café au Lit
Anne Langlois and Patrice Goasduff / 40mcube, Rennes
Collectif Rada Boukova, Thomas Fontaine, Shanta Rao, Joe Tang

Guest
Emmanuelle Lequeux

Lectures / Discussions / Auditorium du Pavillon Carré de Baudoin
Coordination : Aude Launay