MIDNIGHT WALKERS
A cooperation between Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz/Basel and Le Credac, Ivry/Seine, Paris
Kunsthaus Baselland
St. Jakob-Str. 170
CH-4132 Muttenz/Basel
www.kunsthausbaselland.ch
Le Credac
93 avenue Georges Gosnot
F-94200 Ivry-sur-Seine
www.credac-and-co.com
Participating artists:
Kunsthaus Baselland
Saâdane Afif, Delphine Coindet, Annelise Coste, Sylvie Fanchon, Sylvie Fleury, Amy Granat, Mathieu Mercier, Olivier Mosset, Markus Augustinus Müller, Florence Paradeis, Frédéric Post, Didier Rittener, Alain Séchas 21. 1. 5. 3 2006
Le Credac
Saâdane Afif, Yan Duyvendak, Sylvie Fleury, Amy Granat, Renée Lévi, Olivier Mosset, Edit Oderbolz, Florence Paradeis, Steven Parrino, Didier Rittener, Alain Séchas, Pierre Vadi, Jean-Luc Verna 2. 2 9. 4 2006
a project by Claire Le Restif and Sabine Schaschl-Cooper
With the exhibition Midnight Walkers, the curators of both venues, Kunsthaus Baselland and Le Credac, i.e. Sabine Schaschl-Cooper and Claire Le Restif, have engaged in a special type of cooperation. On the one hand, the architectural and geographic conditions prevailing in both institutions play a roleboth Kunsthaus Baselland and Le Credac are situated in urban peripheries and are, either partly or in their entirety, characterized by their underground architecture. On the other hand, the heritage of the French group of Situationists (active between 1957 and 1972) was taken as a conceptual point of departure, emphasis being placed on the act of roaming the city, on immersing oneself in whatever it has to offer, and on going with the flow. The city and its secret peripheries were discovered and described by the Situationists as places of intense social and political conflicts. Everyday discoveries, drifting through the city with the purpose of getting a real, unadulterated taste of it also form the basis of contemporary artistic creations. Against this backdrop, the exhibition Midnight Walkers perceives itself as a romantic, synthetic, and fictitious landscape in which nocturnal roving implies a searching, melancholy, pensive, but also ironic and humoristic mood in harmony with ones living conditions. The cooperation between Kunsthaus Baselland and Le Credac is founded on the mutual appreciation of their curatorial work, and on the interest evinced in the artworks that have been on display in one, but not both, institutions. The shows revolve around works created by artists from France as well as from French- and German-speaking Switzerland. The two exhibitions, while differing in their spatial setup, methodology, and the art they offer, engage in a cross-border dialogue that will result in a joint publication.
