INSIDERS - Tonight at CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain and Arc en Rêve Centre d'Architecture - Bordeaux, France

Wonder Land, 2008, 80 color slides, realized with the collaboration of the Municipal Archives of the City of Limassol, Cyprus

October 10 2009 - 1 February 2010

as part of
EVENTO, the artistic & urban rendez-vous of Bordeaux

From 9 October 2009 to 7 February 2010 at the Entrepôt

there will be an exhibition at the Entrepôt in Bordeaux co-organized by arc en rêve centre d’architecture and the CAPC contemporary art museum, as part of the Bordeaux urban arts biennale Evento.

Since the first investigations carried out in 1804 by the Académie Celtique, whose job it was to collect the traditions, customs and languages, followed by the introduction of the termfolklore by William Thoms in 1846, the notion of folklore has always constituted an alternative to central power, and has always been associated with the definition of local identities. It is the setting for a symbolic confrontation: popular knowledge versus the knowledge of an elite eager to preserve the notion of universalism. For this reason the exhibition deliberately reflects a change in civilization where the rules of the old division between “dominant culture” and “counter- cultures” has evolved: working as a network within a global system, current folklore-related practices in the field of art proceed by appropriation and transformation, delocalization and relocalization, intermingling and recycling.

Insiders are members of a small group of people who share knowledge that is protected by precise codes of transmission. Unlike the expert, whose position is more remote, insiders have in their hands the raw materials of the cultural context to which they belong and which they can legitimately observe or represent. The circulation and transformation of these forms of knowledge are part and parcel of what this exhibition sets out to present.

In order to understand these approaches, the overall method of the Insiders project is based on the principle of on-the-spot investigation, after the manner of the early folklorists who worked in their own particular areas using techniques of observation and inventory. To bring this method of investigation up to date, a number of “observer/participants” (artists, curators, collectors, collectives and so on) in various parts of the world have been asked to share their experiences.

We have chosen to address each of the selected projects from the point of view of their methods, approaches and expertise, providing an inventory of the types of action they involve: amplification (augmenting, adding on, etc), bricolage (do-it-yourself, dismantling and reassembly, transforming, adapting, developing, etc), celebrating (commemorating, parading, initiation, etc), exchange (borrowing, swapping, recycling, repurposing, etc), collecting (accumulating, piling up, archiving, etc), playing (competing, participating, challenging, etc), revising (reconstituting, replaying, imitating, copying, reconnecting, etc), transmission (sharing immaterial knowledge, cultural codes, codes of identity, etc). All these actions are linked by a common theme – that of “collection” – which has key importance in the framework of Insiders. This theme – which subsumes notions of selecting, bringing together, highlighting and preserving items within a whole – forms a common thread in folkloric, artistic, anthropological and museographic processes. All the propositions selected for the exhibition involve the idea of collecting objects, information, singular events and minor stories, whose modes of transmission might include raw archives, documentary films, themed museum displays, storytelling and performance.

As these modes of expression are so very diverse, the exhibition avoids a synthetic approach, attempting more disparate form somewhere between order and chaos, akin to a choral recitative.


Charlotte Laubard, Yann Chateigné Tytelman, Émilie Renard curators for the CAPC
Christophe Kihm, scientific adviser

With: 2012 Architecten / Cornelia Lauf • 4 Taxis • Kim Adams • Cory Arcangel • Vladimir Arkhipov • Bertille Bak • Ball & Nogues Studio • Leah Beeferman • Patrick Bouchain • Alexander Brodsky • Patrice Caillet • Jean-Marc Chapoulie + Denis Savary • Raimond Chaves / Inti Guerrero • Cybermohalla / Cédric Vincent • Calin Dan • Burning Man Festival • Stefan Canham + Rufi na Wu • Crimsons Architectural Historians + Felix Rottenberg • BuröN Detours • Jeremy Deller • Daniel Dewar & Grégory Gicquel + Mick Peter + Aiden & Agnes Fynch • Stephane Doesinger • Jimmie Durham • Thierry Ehrmann • El Ultimo Grito • EqA • Ruth Ewan • Fashion Architecture Taste • Peter Fattinger + Design-Build • Cao Fei • Peter Fischli & David Weiss • Pierre Fisher et Justin Meekel • Freistilmuseum / Tiphanie Blanc • Terunobu Fujimori • Anna Galtarossa & Daniel Gonzalez • Dionisio Gonzalez • Gramazio & Kohler • Richard Greaves • Peter Haimerl • Helen & Hard • Anna Heringer & Eike Roswag • HildunK • V. T. Houteff / Jim Shaw • Interbreeding Field • Pierre Joseph • Alan Kane • Igloo Media Patrimoniu • Mike Kelley • le Vilain • Laurent Legall • Jacques Loeuille • Abu Bakarr Mansaray • Joseph Marzolla • Asier Mendizabal • Mathieu Mercier • MMW • Christodoulos Panayiotou • Gaël Peltier • Nikolay Polissky • Marjetica Potrc • Raumlabor • Pedro G. Romero / Archivo F.X. • Adelfo Scaranello • anonymes / Janet Lee Scott • Dubravka Sekulic & Ivan Kucina • SPEEDISM • Sitesize • Brad Templeton • Suzanne Treister • Oscar Tuazon • Marcel Türkowsky • Viljoen & Bohn • Kaïn Vockler + Archis Interventions • Mario Ybarra Jr. • Raphael Zarka • Andrea Zittel

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