La Permanence
- Setting up of "La Permanence", September 2017. Image: Mathilde Assier
La Permanence
In the framework of Koki Tanaka’s 2017 Pernod Ricard Fellowship
From September 19 to 30
Transplanting basil seedlings, waxing the wooden stairs, discussing an exhibition while cooking, planning a program of events, taking care of an artwork, paying an invoice, cleaning the bar... All these are essential activities in an institution yet they remain invisible, concealed, even devalued. With La Permanence, Koki Tanaka (2017 Pernod Ricard Fellow) chooses to put the daily life and work of the team and its interlocutors (technicians, artists, various professionals, friends) back at the center of the public life of Villa Vassilieff.
For several years, Koki Tanaka has been assembling temporary collectives revolving around activities that try to make visible situations usually ignored in our daily lives. During his residency in the frame of the Pernod Ricard Fellowship, Villa Vassilieff becomes a "permanence" opening up to artists, curators, researchers, philosophers, educators, activists and students to discuss a wide range of subjects - all of them having in common to question the possible ways of act on the world we live in, whether through education, hospitality or ecology.
Every Tuesday to Saturday from 11am to 7pm, the audience is invited to share the spaces of Villa Vassilieff with a contingent of potted plants, open or closed books, kitchen smells, videos by Koki Tanaka, with the team of La Permanence and its various guests following a series of meetings and workshops, announced or improvised.
STATEMENT BY KOKI TANAKA
"We are in the era of new wave of nationalism, xenophobia and conservatism. In Europe, Asia, US we see that everywhere. Ironically such right-wing movement imitates and leans from the strategy of the left. They grow up as a ‘glass roots’ movement by people. They try to use democratic system, because they are majority, to deny multiculturalism – living together with someone who has totally different background. Fears of terrorism also push people’s mind to even more conservative. Probably situation is not that easy to distinguish between ‘we’ and ‘them.’
Artists, curators, art related people are basically open-minded and liberal. So if I’m with them only I never realize that what is really going on in the society. Maybe this is the way people in art world think last couple of years. Why it happen, when it happen, how it happen… We might still think that we are living in the world from 10 years ago, but maybe not anymore. How we can rethink about our society, and its social situation?
My project for Villa Vassilieff is about forming a group like a study group – to generate a situation of leaning each other.
Regarding a way of forming a group, I refer two methodologies in a past – resistance and artist collective.
During the WW2 there was resistance groups active in Paris when Nazi occupied the city, as you know. They were communists, immigrant workers, anti-fascists, and also women participated too (it was rare that women was involved politics since they didn’t have the right to vote yet). They meet at mundane spots like Laundromat, sports club, café and museum. And exchange their thoughts and plans of their attack or maybe just enjoy their meeting and talk freely in such devastated time.
Paris is a city for artists, but also for artist collectives. The city accepted so many immigrant artists, asylum seeker artists, or foreign art students to encourage them to be artists. And they form groups in the past or they started an artistic movement. They discussed together, drunk together, worked and exhibited together.
Two types groups – one is hidden, the other is loose, I’d like to refer those to rethink about “our” social situation in Paris/Europe/the world. I propose to form a fictional artist collective, and meet at places where resistance had secret meetings. It’ll be a series of activities; a discussion on current situation, eating together, walks, film screening, music live or so. It also develops with the member of the group."
Koki Tanaka, June 18, 2017
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