Curator Statement

VR at ENSBA, ECOLE NATIONALE SUPERIEURE DES BEAUX-ARTS

ISEA2000 is meant to be an instantaneous photograph of today’s digital creation. The exhibition Beyond the screen, is proposing a selection of digital and interactive works which are expressing artists’ will, beyond technological drifts, to engage the medium without restriction and without exclusion. Techniques and practices are coexisting and contaminating each others in an usage liberated from contemporary categories. From printed matter to virtual reality, these installations reveal themselves, beyond the device, a discourse, beyond Image : the meaning to live in a recasting of roles and processes dedicated to art.

Presented in the chapelle and other spaces of the Ecole nationale superieure des beaux-arts de Paris, this exhibition happens in a more general framework including colloquium, meetings, presentations of students works in crossed interaction with the artistic formation process of the School.

The Ecole nationale superieure des beaux-arts (National Fine Arts School) is counting 680 students from over 50 countries and 60 international artists/teachers. The involvment of Ensba in ISEA2000 was obvious because of the specificity of its teachings which together with the practice of painting, drawing and scuplture, gives a large space to the field of emultimediaa. Video, sound, computer technology and the web, photography, installation and performance are fully represented in the workshops, the technical bases, through the committment of professors and guest artists, through the research program established in 2000 and the Master multimedia-hypermedia.
This event allows to present not only works from international important artists in the electronic arts, but also propositions by students committed to this field of creation..

Thanks to Philippe Codognet.
VORTEX is a non profit organisation, whose goals are research, promotion, creation and diffusion on, for and with the new artistic and cultural media. Founding members: Anne-Marie Duguet, Martine Bour, Jean-Pierre Balpe, Jean-Baptiste Barriere and Maurice Benayoun.

Coordination: Martine Bour for the CIREN/Universite Paris 8 & Nicolas Aubrun for the Ensba.

Scenography: Anna Adahl.

Production: Ensba and CIREN/Paris 8.

CIREN is an Interdisciplinary Center for research on digital aesthetics, laboratory of Universite Paris 8, created in partnership with the Ministere de la Culture.

• VORTEX, Curator of the exhibition

With the support of the Ministry of Culture and Communication (DDAT/DAI/DRAC Ile de France)