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The 11th International Symposium of In Situ Art, on the theme of LEGACY, will be our most important event since we launched our symposiums in 1995. Multilayered memories of past places, works and their creators have built up along our trails for over 15 years. The traces left by these successive passages have accumulated like palimpsests and now prompt us to reflect on the question of heritage and lasting legacy: what are we going to hand down to our children, in terms of environment and culture, in a society based on the disposable and overconsumption, where the ephemeral and the virtual are the order of the day, without any memory of history? Our guest artists, poets, composers and speakers are joining in this process of reflection and are each, in their own way, examining the meaning of LEGACY. Also this year, we are updating the memory held within our trails with photographs of previous symposiums, in order to recall the works that have been a highlight of our symposiums for the past 15 years. René Derouin Artist and Artistic Director |
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LEGACY: GIVING, AND GIVING IN RETURN A look at the 2011 list of guest artists reveals a Symposium that will be transgenerational, transdisciplinary, transhistorical and transamerican. They have all demonstrated, in their respective practices, a fondness for artistic interventions outside gallery walls. The dynamics of gift and counter-gift-what is first given, and what is then given in return-is the main transactional link between the works; gifts either tangible or intangible, without anything expected in return. Because their practises are rooted in the material they use (which often comes from scraps and remnants), expertise in techniques and processes is a prerequisite. Prolific, and with a great appetite for work, they are very hands-on, even though their approaches are primarily conceptual. The artists share a certain familiarity, including a kind of irreverence in their view of their particular artistic discipline and their evocations of the ills of contemporary society, from which they do not exclude themselves, however. Their disruptions of reality flow out of different choices they have made: the choice to laugh at it-albeit a forced laugh, sometimes-that can’t hide a healthy commitment to alternative solutions, but without ever preaching. In one way or another, they all challenge the primacy and legacy of human beings on this earth. Emmanuel Galland |
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