Alfred Jarry Archipelago
La valse des pantins – Acte II
October 18, 2015–February 14, 2016
Centre d’art contemporain de la Ferme du Buisson
Allée de la Ferme – Noisiel 77448 Marne-la-Vallée Cedex 2
France
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday 2–7:30pm
Free entrance
T +33 1 64 62 77 00
contact [at] lafermedubuisson.com
Alfred Jarry Archipelago
William Anastasi / Julien Bismuth / Paul Chan / Marvin Gaye Chetwynd / Rainer Ganahl / Dora Garcia / Naotaka Hiro / Mike Kelley / Tala Madani / Nathaniel Mellors / Henrik Olesen
Curators: Keren Detton and Julie Pellegrin
Opening: Sunday, October 18, 4pm
with a reading-performance by William Anastasi
Shuttle leaves Opéra-Bastille Paris at 3:30pm
Advance booking required: T +33 1 64 62 77 77
Curators’ tour: January 10, 4 pm
Alfred Jarry Archipelago is a large project initiated by Le Quartier-Centre for Contemporary Art in Quimper (France), La Ferme du Buisson Centre for Contemporary Art in Noisiel (France), and Museo Marino Marini in Florence (Italy). The venture is part of Piano, the Franco-Italian art exchange platform, in collaboration with M-Museum and Playground festival in Leuven (Belgium).
La Valse des pantins – Acte II
All most people remember of Jarry is the King Ubu furore, which overshadows a complex body of work marked by radical experimentation and an unmannerly blending of genres. In bringing together a remarkable group of one-of-a-kind international artists, Alfred Jarry Archipelago demonstrates that an entire register of current art and performance is shot through with potent, “Jarryesque” transgression.
In his poetry, plays and drawings, Alfred Jarry (1873–1907) shattered the boundaries of the social, moral and aesthetic order of the late 19th century. Like a thunderclap, his King Ubu’s famed “Shitr!” paved the way for the modernity that was waiting in the wings: from Marcel Duchamp to Harald Szeemann, and including the Futurists, the Surrealists, the Conceptuals and all the many others indebted to this “proto-Dadaist.”
Between the turn of one century and that of its successor, Jarry’s work and ideas seem to have breathed new life into society and art. The abolition of limits—to disciplines, identity, good sense, good taste—that he explored in his life and his work led him to a totally new approach to drama, the body and language, as well as to issues of domination, whether related to desire, knowledge or power. Homing in a selection of Jarryesque motifs, Alfred Jarry Archipelago sets out to pinpoint their reappearance in the visual arts, on the cusp of theatre, dance and literature.
In his celebrated “pataphysical manifesto” Exploits and Opinions of Dr Faustroll, Jarry describes an initiatory island-hopping voyage that abolishes factual geography in favour of its artistic equivalent. Each chapter of Book 3 recounts a landfall on an imaginary island dedicated to a writer or artist of the time. If he were sailing through today’s world, what kind of landscape of the last century would Jarry orchestrate? In the same spirit, Alfred Jarry Archipelago invites him along as a posthumous curator: for a string of islands embodying the works of various artists and sketching an uncompromisingly subjective view of his heritage. Unfolding over several months, in different places and in different shapes and forms—group and solo exhibitions, screenings, performances, encounters—the project will be rounded off with a major catalogue.
After a first act at Le Quartier, Centre for contemporary art in Quimper, La Ferme du Buisson is presenting Act II: a mix of new works and monographic groupings, with each artist occupying a block in an architectural context inspired by a Jarryesque approach to the body and space.
Archipelago program
Alfred Jarry Archipelago: La valse des pantins – Act I
June 5–August 30, 2015
Curators: Keren Detton and Julie Pellegrin
Le Quartier-Center for contemporary Art (Quimper, France)
Alfred Jarry Archipelago: ‘Ha’Ha
October 7–10, 2015
Curator: Leonardo Bigazzi
Museo Marino Marini (Florence, Italy)
Performance day
February 13, 2016
Curators: Leonardo Bigazzi, Keren Detton, Julie Pellegrin and Eva Wittocx
La Ferme du Buisson (Noisiel, France)
Associate projects
Curator: Eva Wittocx
Guy De Cointet
September 17, 2015–January 10, 2016
Jimmy Robert
November 19, 2015–January 31, 2016
Playground festival
November 19–22, 2015
M-Museum and STUK Art Center (Leuven, Belgium)
