Formes Brèves, Autres, 25
27 January–8 April 2012
49 Nord 6 Est – FRAC Lorraine
Metz, France
Admission free
Tue–Fri, 2−7 pm
Sat–Sun: 11 am−7 pm
Artists: Anna Barham, Nina Beier & Marie Lund, Alejandro Cesarco, Amélie Dubois, Dora García, Fabio Kacero, David Lamelas, Ján Mančuška, Helen Mirra, Claire Morel, Tania Mouraud, Ewa Partum and Charles Sandison
Curator: Anja Isabel Schneider
Digital book, electronic book, or e-book, are all terms designating the new forms given to the book, paperback, printed matter, or the manuscript. The creation and distribution of new reading tools undermine traditional modes of writing and reading which are facing a great challenge today.
To enter a three-dimensional book: this is what Anja Isabel Schneider invites us to do. She sees her exhibition as a reading in itself, subject to interruptions and suspensions generated by the architecture of the space. The selected works examine the relations and interactions between the text and the reader, the condition, the act, and the process of reading which give rise to meaning.
From the formes brèves* in the space occupied by Ján Mančuška to Ewa Partum’s conceptual poems, from Amélie Dubois’ sound palimpsest to the taxonomy of words invented by Fabio Kacero, from Anna Barham’s wordplays to Charles Sandison’s ballet of words, these works foreshadow the changes in the reader’s behaviors in the digital age. Inscribed within the spaces of the 49 Nord 6 Est – FRAC Lorraine, this exhibition invites the audience to discern, decipher, construct… and imagine!
Anja Isabel Schneider’s project questions the notion of reading in its various modalities of experimentation, experience, and structure. This exhibition explores the question of “fragmentary” or elusive reading—that is, reading which resists and unsettles the reader. Every reader/visitor is thus given an essential role–that of an active reader. As a secular literary form, the forme brève privileges certain artistic genres: dedication, poem of circumstance, index, news flash, word play, witticism, haiku, fragment, maxim, etc. It solicits the imagination of the reader who is no longer a passive audience but becomes a producer. Between the texts and their readers, the spaces generated by formes brèves—blank or latent spaces—thus become a pause, a reflexive moment, a break for inspiration, an invitation to create…
* The genre of short written form.
CO-PRODUCTION : MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Vigo (Spain)
WORKS ON LOAN FROM: Billarant Collection; the galleries Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires; Acarde, London and Murray Guy, New York; and the artists.
Group visits in English on request
mediation@fraclorraine.org
Complete schedule of events is available on our website:
www.fraclorraine.org