Close
When you subscribe to Furtherfield’s newsletter service you will receive occasional email newsletters from us plus invitations to our exhibitions and events. To opt out of the newsletter service at any time please click the unsubscribe link in the emails.
Close
All Content
Contributors
UFO Icon
Close
Irridescent cyber duck illustration with a bionic eye Irridescent cyber bear illustration with a bionic eye Irridescent cyber bee illustration
Visit People's Park Plinth

Interview with Fabien Danesi of Prec(ar)ious Collectives

06/07/2017
Chloe Stavrou

CS: Tell us a little bit about how the collaboration between Palais de Tokyo’s residency Pavilion Neuflize OBC and Fluxum/Flux Laboratory came about. Did this directly contribute to the hybrid of visual/dance performance art or was it the artists’ call?

FD: During two years, the Pavillon Neuflize OBC has worked with the National Opera of Paris for projects at the crossroads between contemporary art and choreography. We wanted to develop this perspective which is a kind of tradition in the history of the Pavilion (created in 2001), if we remember that our institution has a long interest for transdisciplinarity. So the hybridization between visual art and performance wasn’t the artists’ call. On the contrary, we asked them to step aside for collaborating with choreographers. It was really experimental for them.

CS: Neither Palais de Tokyo or Fluxum/Flux Laboratory are situated in Greece. What was the reason for its inception to take place in Athens? Was it because of the traffic Athens would see due to documenta 14 or was it a suggestion by Andonis Foniadakis, the choreographic director?

FD: Since its creation, Fluxum/Flux Laboratory has developed many dance projects in Greece. And it’s due to its founder, Cynthia Odier, that Ange Leccia and myself met Andonis Foniadakis. We started the dialog with Andonis right at the moment of his nomination as the Ballet Director of the Greek National Opera, o Athens appeared quickly as the perfect place for our collaboration. We decided just afterwards to take advantage of the presence of documenta 14 in the city.

CS: The result is quite impressive – specifically since, and correct me if I’m wrong – the work produced was created in only two weeks in March. How did you find the process of working and creating collaboratively in addition to being in an unfamiliar city?

FD: The residents came to Athens for the first time in November 2016. During the first week, we had met the choreographers and dancers but also people who are engaged in the artistic life of the city. We tried to understand and use the pulse of this specific urban energy. We visited some sites for the exhibition and began to question the relevance of our own presence here. The conversations with the choreographers permitted us to create a strong link with Athens and not feel like tourists. We came back for a three-week workshop in March, just before the opening of our show. Between these two stays, we discussed a lot and had decided to start from our situation with the desire to move away from an artificial subject. The notion of the collective seemed a good way of taking charge of what we tried to do – especially because the Pavilion tries every year to create a specific group that gives a specific form to its structure.

CS: Prec(ar)ious Collectives feels like it could be quite nomadic as it is in an unfamiliar environment; however nomadic does not mean it feels odd or out of place – in fact it felt quite the opposite. As a curator, how did you approach Athens and stay conscious of the context(s) surrounding it?

FD: The fact that we didn’t exhibit in a white cube or an artistic space helped us. When we decided to occupy this abandoned building on Akadimias Street, I was sure that we would be related strongly to the city and its history. The context wasn’t outside of the walls – it was here, with us. Of course, we were all conscious that we needed to stay in relation to what was happening in the city. That’s why nobody arrived with their work completed and done. The materials and the main elements of the creations were an artistic answer to this particular context.

CS: I am very curious about the building. I understand it used to be the Diplomatic Centre for the Third Reich during the Second World War. How did you become aware of its existence, and did your decision to curate Prec(ar)ious Collectives have anything to do with the building’s history? If not, what was the reason for selecting this building?

FD: In January 2017, the director of the Pavilion Ange Leccia was in Athens to present some of his work. He visited the exhibition organized by Locus Athens in this space and it impressed him quite a bit. We wanted to work in an abandoned site for underlining the economical and cultural situation in Greece. And Akadimias Street 23 seemed perfect. We didn’t choose it for its history, even if these multiple layers added some density to our proposal. For sure, the different atmospheres of the rooms immediately gave us the possibility to create dialogs between the works while preserving the integrity of each. So, it was a question of ambience in the sense of the architectural conditions aiding the experience of the audience.

Image credit: Stylianos Tsatsos

CS: I found that a continuous theme within the exhibition was not only the creation of a utopic community, but also an ambience that generates a state of limbo – of transition. Was this a reference to the state of Athens or to the state of artistic production or work?

FD: The notion of limbo is stimulating. And it insists on our «spectral approach». It means that we have tried to give life to this abandoned building. And some installations can be described as floating. In Manolis Daskalakis-Lemos and Lola Gonzalez’s videos, for example, there is the idea of apparition. And even with Taloi Havini’s huge ephemeral camp, we can feel a sort of «in-between» space, archaic and futurist, protective and dangerous. Maybe it was a re-transcription of our impressions about Athens, so appealing and full of energy, but at the same time, so undermined by the political situation.

CS: As a final note, what is the next step for Prec(ar)ious Collectives after its brief residency in Athens? Are there any plans to simulate the experience, albeit differently, again in another context or place?

FD: There won’t be another step for Prec(ar)ious Collectives as a group exhibition. It was really the result of a one-month workshop. But it happens for the best that some encounters initiated in the Pavilion can be developed after the time of the residency.

CS: And any future projects that you will be a part of?

FD: On my side, I will develop a curatorial project next year in Los Angeles in the frame of FLAX residency. Titled The Dialectic of the Stars, I will organize several evenings in different institutions which will permit artists? to drift in the city from one site to another for catching some contradictory parts of the L.A. atmosphere. The idea is to mix French artists and Los Angeles-based artists and to trace a political and poetical constellation.

To find out more read Chloe Stavrou’s recent review: Community Situation: Prec(ar)ious Collectives and documenta 14

Chloe Stavrou was born in Cyprus on the 6th of April, 1993. In 2013, and during her studies at university, she founded an interdisciplinary non-profit arts organisation named Tech-à-tête in her hometown, Limassol, Cyprus. Originally, Tech-à-tête was her personal reaction to the 2013 economic crisis in Cyprus and began as a free pop-up music & visual arts festival where all proceeds were used to purchase school and art supplies for children in need. Ever since, Tech-à-tête has been expanding and evolving into an educational and cultural hub with one of its goals actively addressing the inadequecy of dispersing governmental funds equally to art and cultural sectors. Another goal is to showcase local artists of all disciplines through initiating cultural and social conversations in the limiting artistic environment that is Cyprus. During her English and Related Literature/History of Art BA studies at the University of York in the UK, she majored in Contemporary Art & Digital Culture, American Independent Film, Post-War European Film, Post-Colonial Writing, Art Theory and American Literature beyond the 20th Century. Furthermore, she wrote her dissertation, which was a cross-disciplinary piece of writing, on the presence of Manifesto Writing as a Performance Object in Jenny Holzer's early work, 'The Inflammatory Essays'. After graduating in July, 2015 she worked for Ashkal Alwan (a non-profit arts organisation in Beirut, Lebanon) and assisted in the production of their international cultural forum called 'Home Works 7'. She is now undertaking an Art Business MA at the Sotheby's Institute of Art. Her curatorial practice and critical writing interests are transdiscplinary with regards to medium and revolve around deciphering the complexities of an ever-evolving digital landscape in the presence of post-humanity, post-connectivity/post-intimacy and post-capitalism. She also likes to mock these terms sometimes. In addition, since 2012, she has also created a musical alter-ego called 'Kineza' which allows her to express herself through playing music, sharing music, curating music, thus giving her the ability to create a lack of context without fearing judgement. She has played in bars, clubs, venues and festivals in Cyprus, the UK and Lebanon.

Share: Twitter Instagram Facebook
Chloe Stavrou was born in Cyprus on the 6th of April, 1993. In 2013, and during her studies at university, she founded an interdisciplinary non-profit arts organisation named Tech-à-tête in her hometown, Limassol, Cyprus. Originally, Tech-à-tête was her personal reaction to the 2013 economic crisis in Cyprus and began as a free pop-up music & visual arts festival where all proceeds were used to purchase school and art supplies for children in need. Ever since, Tech-à-tête has been expanding and evolving into an educational and cultural hub with one of its goals actively addressing the inadequecy of dispersing governmental funds equally to art and cultural sectors. Another goal is to showcase local artists of all disciplines through initiating cultural and social conversations in the limiting artistic environment that is Cyprus. During her English and Related Literature/History of Art BA studies at the University of York in the UK, she majored in Contemporary Art & Digital Culture, American Independent Film, Post-War European Film, Post-Colonial Writing, Art Theory and American Literature beyond the 20th Century. Furthermore, she wrote her dissertation, which was a cross-disciplinary piece of writing, on the presence of Manifesto Writing as a Performance Object in Jenny Holzer's early work, 'The Inflammatory Essays'. After graduating in July, 2015 she worked for Ashkal Alwan (a non-profit arts organisation in Beirut, Lebanon) and assisted in the production of their international cultural forum called 'Home Works 7'. She is now undertaking an Art Business MA at the Sotheby's Institute of Art. Her curatorial practice and critical writing interests are transdiscplinary with regards to medium and revolve around deciphering the complexities of an ever-evolving digital landscape in the presence of post-humanity, post-connectivity/post-intimacy and post-capitalism. She also likes to mock these terms sometimes. In addition, since 2012, she has also created a musical alter-ego called 'Kineza' which allows her to express herself through playing music, sharing music, curating music, thus giving her the ability to create a lack of context without fearing judgement. She has played in bars, clubs, venues and festivals in Cyprus, the UK and Lebanon. Share: Twitter Instagram Facebook