[ISEA2011] Panel: Cyril Thomas & Jean-Luc Soret (moderators) – 6×6/36: An Artists Book/Exhibition project

Panel Statement

Pre­sen­ters: Jean-Luc Soret, Clarisse Bar­diot & An­nick Bu­reaud

The French-based Col­lec­tif NUNC is happy to launch the first el­e­ment of the 6×6/36 artists book/ex­hi­bi­tion pro­ject from the I Wish You Were Here! se­ries, a cre­atively dri­ven pro­ject aimed at re-think­ing a new way to ex­hibit media art. 6×6/36 con­sists of six note­books and six sets of stick­ers by 36 artists, and in­cludes a total of 144 art­works in a pur­posely de­signed box. The first issue deals with the theme of mo­bil­ity and will be pub­lished by Subjec­tile.

I Wish You Were Here! is a se­ries of the­matic pro­jects put for­ward by the French-based Col­lec­tif NUNC (Clarisse Bar­diot, An­nick Bu­reaud, Jean-Luc Soret and Cyril Thomas) in an at­tempt to re-ex­am­ine the re­la­tion­ship be­tween print and on­line pub­lish­ing and new ways of ex­hibit­ing art.

6 X 6 / 36 is the first issue in the I Wish You Were Here! se­ries. It con­sists of 6 note­books and 6 sets of stick­ers de­signed by 36 artists, and in­cludes a total of 144 art­works.

Both an ex­hi­bi­tion and a pub­li­ca­tion that takes the form of 6 note­books and sets of stick­ers con­tained in a pur­posely de­signed box, 6 X 6 / 36 ex­plores an in­no­v­a­tive and no­madic ap­proach to con­tem­po­rary art. Each note­book is dis­play­ing the cre­ations of 6 artists who share a com­mon theme. Each work is printed on a sticker as a data ma­trix. Thus, the reader can ac­cess the art­work – or in­for­ma­tion about it– on a web­site via his/her smart­phone or a spe­cific ap­pli­ca­tion. 6 X 6 / 36 blurs the bound­ary be­tween print and on­line pub­li­ca­tion and ex­hi­bi­tion for­mats. The stick­ers can be peeled off and placed in a home or pub­lic place, al­low­ing the user to de­sign his/her own ex­hi­bi­tion.

6 X 6 / 36 moves away from the tra­di­tional for­mat of the gallery or mu­seum ex­hi­bi­tion to ap­pro­pri­ate urban and pub­lic space, as poster de­sign­ers and graf­fiti artists have long done. It fol­lows the flow of data on the in­ter­net, spread­ing all over the city and reach­ing the most in­con­gru­ous lo­ca­tions. The artist’s sig­na­ture and the motif no longer have any ex­is­ten­tial value; they take sec­ond place to the on­line art­work.

At ISEA2011 in Is­tan­bul, we are launch­ing the first note­book in the 6 X 6 / 36 se­ries on the theme of mo­bil­ity. The six artists are : Annie Abra­hams, Beat­riz da Costa, Nico­las Fre­spech, Antti Laiti­nen, Al­ber­tine Me­u­nier, Ser­vo­valve.  The pro­ject is pub­lished by Sub­jec­tile.

Col­lec­tif NUNC:  Cyril Thomas, Jean-Luc Soret, Clarisse Bar­diot, An­nick Bu­reaud. More in­for­ma­tion is avail­able at nunc.com

  • Cyril Thomas is a doc­toral stu­dent at the Uni­ver­sité Pi­cardie Jules Verne and Tele­com Paris­Tech (Ecole Na­tionale Supérieure des Télécom­mu­ni­ca­tions). He is a free­lance jour­nal­ist and free­lance cu­ra­tor. He is a fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to the French on­line re­view poptronics.fr, as well as to four other re­views: Ciel Vari­able (Canada), Le Mag­a­zine du CIAC (Canada), Patch (Bel­gium) and Scènes (Bel­gium). He is work­ing on a spe­cial issue of the French re­view MCD about the in­ter­net of things. As a free­lance cu­ra­tor he is prepar­ing three in­ter­na­tional ex­hi­bi­tions about dig­i­tal and per­for­mance art.
  • Jean-Luc Soret is a pho­tog­ra­phy and new media art cu­ra­tor at the Mai­son Européenne de la Pho­togra­phie (mep-fr.org) in Paris. He is the artis­tic di­rec­tor and co-founder of the @rt Out­siders In­ter­na­tional Fes­ti­val, an an­nual show de­voted to works at the in­ter­sec­tion of the arts, sci­ences, and tech­nol­ogy. Mem­ber of the cu­ra­to­r­ial team of the Eu­ro­pean Month of Pho­tog­ra­phy (emop-mutations.net), net­work gath­er­ing in­sti­tu­tions from Moscow, Bratislava, Vi­enna, Berlin, Lux­em­bourg, Rome and Paris, he also col­lab­o­rates with the CNES (French Space Agency / cnes-observatoire.net) since 2003 to pro­mote the im­pact of space in the cul­tural and art fields.
  • An­nick Bu­reaud, France, is an independent art critic, curator and event organiser, researcher and teacher in art and technosciences. She is the director of Leonardo/Olats, European sister organisation to Leonardo/Isast. She is a co-founding member of the Collectif Nunc. annickbureaud.netAnnick’s presence at ISEA is made possible with the support of the Institut Français.
  • Clarisse Bar­diot works as a curator and editor with digital artists, choreographers, directors, engineers, computer scientists and technicians. From 2006 to 2010, she joined le manège.mons/CECN and Technocité to conduct two European programs (Interreg) on art, science and technology. These two programs, CECN2 and Transdigital, are between Wallonia, Flanders and France. She coordinated the partners (Le manège.mons, le manège maubeuge, Le Fresnoy, Vooruit, Latitudes Contemporaines, Art Zoyd, Danse à Lille, Technocité, Charleroi/Danses), defined the workshops, conferences and artists in residence program and was the chief editor of Patch, a bilingual magazine on digital performance and digital art. Clarisse Bardiot studied theater and contemporary art, receiving a PhD in 2005. Her Ph.D. dissertation Virtual Theatres traces the history and aesthetics forms of digital performance with a corpus of more than 300 works around the world. She is an associate professor at the Arts Department, University of Valenciennes (France) where she teaches new media art and theory and digital performance history and practice. As a researcher, Clarisse Bardiot contributed to various research programs, among them the Docam program on digital art presentation and documentation. She presented lectures and seminars in different cultural institutions and universities. She is also a member of the CNRS team “ARIAS” (Atelier de recherches sur l’intermédialité et les arts du spectacle). Clarisse Bardiot’s grants include Daniel Langlois Foundation researchers in residence for a research on artists and engineers dialogue in 9 Evenings, Theatre & Engineering. Currently based in Brussels, she is working on two books on digital performance, a book series on digital art with Internet and Ipad extensions and exhibition projects.  clarissebardiot.info

The Col­lec­tif NUNC  has the fi­nan­cial sup­port of the In­sti­tut Français for the pre­sen­ta­tion of the 6 X 6 / 36   – Déplace­ment / Mo­bil­ity  pro­ject at ISEA2011 in Is­tan­bul.